Scout­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go at­tract­ed head­lines and count­less com­ments dur­ing the course of the African Eman­ci­pa­tion week­end.

Sad­ly, its sud­den burst in­to the head­lines was not due to the hard work, dis­ci­pline or com­mit­ment of the young cubs and scouts. In­stead, one par­tic­u­lar group in south Trinidad un­der­took an ex­er­cise dur­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion week­end to clean the graves of for­mer slave own­ers which drew crit­i­cism and con­cern.

The de­ci­sion, of course, would have been made by the lead­er­ship of the group and I will not de­bate whether, in fact, their de­ci­sion and the tim­ing of it was right. The com­ments on so­cial me­dia were far-reach­ing in their con­dem­na­tion of the ex­er­cise, but there was one per­son who ques­tioned whether par­ents still al­lowed their chil­dren to join Scouts and whether scout­ing was still rel­e­vant in to­day’s so­ci­ety. I in­tend to fo­cus not on the ex­er­cise un­der­tak­en, but the rel­e­vance of scout­ing.

Vi­o­lence in schools and bul­ly­ing are un­for­tu­nate as­pects of aca­d­e­m­ic life in our coun­try. School rules, poli­cies, change in gov­ern­ment, new ap­proach­es to polic­ing - we have tried it all and none of these ad­just­ments have tru­ly healed our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. The root cause is our chil­dren, the bag­gage that they car­ry every day and the in­flu­ence of their sur­round­ings.

Not all chil­dren have ac­cess to ex­pen­sive ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties which fos­ter dis­ci­pline, build con­fi­dence or steer chil­dren to­wards par­tic­u­lar goals.

While tal­ent is free, shap­ing tal­ent comes at a cost. Not all gift­ed young crick­eters or foot­ballers have ac­cess to free train­ing. While we may be­lieve that uni­forms put us on an equal foot­ing when en­ter­ing school cor­ri­dors, ex­pen­sive shoes, bags, watch­es and oth­er ac­ces­sories sep­a­rate us. There is a cost at­tached to every­thing. Not all chil­dren have a sense of be­long­ing, not all chil­dren feel equal, not all chil­dren have the same guid­ance and while this may not be the main cause of vi­o­lence or act­ing out, it cer­tain­ly con­tributes.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child con­tains sev­er­al rights which are es­sen­tial for the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren. Sad­ly, not all chil­dren en­joy these rights. No child should be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against is the sec­ond right, yet chil­dren are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against al­most dai­ly. These rights in­clude that de­ci­sions should be in the best in­ter­est of the child, the right to sur­vival and de­vel­op­ment, re­spect for their views, free­dom of thought and re­li­gion, the right to par­tic­i­pa­tion and so many more.

While chil­dren may not en­joy these rights on a dai­ly ba­sis, there is one place that not on­ly up­holds these rights but teach­es it: scout­ing.

Scout­ing is the one ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T that is free. There is no cost at­tached to join­ing a group and be­com­ing in­volved. There are groups avail­able in al­most all dis­tricts. Chil­dren are taught not just sur­vival skills, but team­work and dis­ci­pline. There is no dis­crim­i­na­tion based on age, gen­der, re­li­gion, in­come brack­et or dis­abil­i­ty.

Cubs and scouts come to­geth­er from all walks of life, dif­fer­ent schools, dif­fer­ent back­grounds and they learn to work to­geth­er, ap­pre­ci­at­ing each oth­er’s skills and as­sist­ing with short­com­ings with a uni­fied goal in mind. Scout­ing fo­cus­es on build­ing char­ac­ter.

Dur­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion week­end, our scout group un­der­took two hikes. The Scouts head­ed to­wards Paria Bay from the Spring Bridge in Blan­chisseuse and the cubs (be­ing the younger mem­bers), to­geth­er with par­ents and Scout lead­ers, took the trek to Sen­na Bay, be­ing a short­er hike. The ter­rain was not at its best. There had been some rain dur­ing the course of the morn­ing, which cre­at­ed pools of wa­ter in the path and some slip­pery in­clines to tra­verse. It wasn’t a race to the fin­ish line. It was a test of en­durance, lead­er­ship skills, the abil­i­ty to adapt and team­work.

Scouts and cubs are taught and un­der­stand when it is time to lead and when it is in their best in­ter­est to fol­low. Both groups worked to­geth­er to en­sure that all team mem­bers stayed on course, were safe, hy­drat­ed and stayed with the group. It was re­ward­ing look­ing at cubs at­tempt­ing to give guid­ance to their par­ents and in­struc­tions on where to place their feet and how to find their bal­ance.

The cubs were able to share en­cour­ag­ing words to mo­ti­vate each oth­er to con­tin­ue de­spite at­tempts (main­ly by the adults) to turn back.

The scouts, on the oth­er hand, did tremen­dous­ly well. They knew that de­spite the weath­er and chal­lenge that lay ahead, they would com­plete their hike. Is­abel, Bri­an, Savir, Sarvesh, Sier­ra, Ale­jan­dro, San­jann and Shriya crossed the line look­ing like they had gone on a Sun­day stroll rather than one of the most dif­fi­cult coastal treks in Trinidad. We were in­cred­i­bly proud of our group.

To an­swer the ques­tion, yes, scout­ing is rel­e­vant in to­day’s so­ci­ety. Per­haps, more so than ever be­fore.

Part of the Scout law says “A scout is a friend to all and a broth­er (sis­ter) to every oth­er scout.” Be­ing part of a group, which is larg­er than any in­di­vid­ual, can en­cour­age a sense of be­long­ing, a fam­i­ly which cel­e­brates your achieve­ments and em­braces your dif­fer­ences.

As a so­ci­ety, we no longer en­cour­age our chil­dren in­to ac­tiv­i­ties or groups which in­sist on dis­ci­pline and al­low chil­dren to sup­port each oth­er.

In­stead, we re­ly on de­vices to en­ter­tain chil­dren and in­sti­gate bul­ly­ing by point­ing out the dif­fer­ences be­tween chil­dren.

Should we chan­nel our chil­dren’s en­er­gy in­to more re­ward­ing ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, we may find that these ac­tiv­i­ties are rel­e­vant in shap­ing more pro­duc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com