Day 5: A Visit that Influenced Our Contingents' Scouting Life

By Lawrence Lai

As a diverse group of Scouting members, we were exhilarated to be visiting the World Scout Bureau in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. The day ahead inspired us to see the Scouting World in a whole new perspective.

On May 6^th, our contingent’s first stop before going to the World Scout Bureau was a small tour to Little India for breakfast with the purpose of experiencing the various cultures that Kuala Lumpur offered. We ate roti canai and various other South Indian foods. After our exotic and unique breakfast, we toured around Little India to get a taste of what India is like by walking around the streets and visiting an Indian dessert bakery, store and other vendors.

After getting back to the bus, the time for our highly anticipated tour to the World Scout Bureau had come. The World Scout Bureau assists in Scouting Committees and promotes the development of Scouting in countries that does not exist. It also strengthens the Scouting development operations internationally by encouraging youth and organizational development. The office was newly built on June 18^th, 2014 and is populated by around 50 staff members.

We were greeted by Scott Teare, the Secretary General who was also a member of the Boy Scouts of America. The staff members presented their vision which is to reach 100 million members worldwide by 2023. By doing that, the Scouting Officials promoted a campaign on the official Scout website, called “Messengers of Peace”. They want to spread Scouting stories of service around the world. From the Question and Answer segment, we learned that the World Scout Organization’s vision is very similar to ours; we focus on youth recruitment and youth retention. We both focus the values of Scouting Principles and becoming a member of a movement. Another function is that they coordinate, communicate and organize incoming and upcoming World Scout Jamborees which one is happening in Japan 2015 and got a sneak preview of the next one in North America in 2019.

Walking around the Scout office, genuine Scout treasures were spread across the number of displays with stories attached to each of them. The tour through to Scott Teare’s office has a great variety of gifts from his friends through Scouting from all around the world.

In the end, he offered an official pin that signifies our new friendship to everyone and took a group photo of us with the “Messenger of Peace” sign.

Our tour ended with a Call to Action that we took away; “Don’t Stop Scouting. It’s in our blood.” Our Rover Crew is truly awesome to be a guest to one of the seven World Scout Bureaus across the world. We found our visit to be truly inspiring to bring back to our Scouting life in Canada. The experience confirms that the volunteer work that we do in our Rover Crew is meaningful and in line with the World Scouting Movement. Our journey continues as we fly to Kuching to prepare to share our story to the Malaysian Scouts.