Sal­ly Ma­haraj is the first woman to be ap­point­ed to the na­tion­al board of the T&T?Scout As­so­ci­a­tion. Ma­haraj, the sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion has a vi­sion that she hopes will re­ju­ve­nate in­ter­est in the scout move­ment.

T&T Guardian met Ma­haraj at St Mary's Col­lege, as scouts from the school's troop busi­ly pre­pared for their 75th An­niver­sary Jam­boree. Boys cut and car­ried pieces of bam­boo to make a bridge, and they demon­strat­ed the ba­sic skills of ty­ing knots and con­struct­ing tents.

Lead­ing all this ac­tiv­i­ty was Ma­haraj, a pe­tite woman who at just over five feet tall, led this op­er­a­tion with mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion. Ma­haraj's first ex­pe­ri­ence with scout­ing was when her son Satyam start­ed school at St Mary's in 2004. He joined the school's scout troop, the 6th Trinidad Sea Scouts (6TSS) and as she did her part as a ded­i­cat­ed par­ent, shut­tling him to and from meet­ings and tak­ing an ac­tive in­ter­est in his ac­tiv­i­ties.

She rem­i­nisced about his first camp­ing trip which was Camp Roy­al, host­ed by Queen's Roy­al Col­lege in 2005. This was a se­mi-in­ter­na­tion­al camp where scout troops from Guyana and the US joined lo­cal troops at Tuck­er Val­ley, Ch­agu­ra­mas.

"We were on a storm watch and the boys were camp­ing in Tuck­er Val­ley. The par­ents were pan­ick­ing about pick­ing up their boys from the camp. When I called they said the army was as­sist­ing them and would move them if they were in any dan­ger. We left them there and they had an ex­pe­ri­ence!

"They had to get up in the mid­dle of the night be­cause their tents were flood­ed, and had to dig trench­es. So they learned from that ex­pe­ri­ence how to man­age flood­ing and trench­es."

In 2006, her role with the scouts changed. When the 6TSS held its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing few par­ents were vol­un­teer­ing for ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions on the or­gan­is­ing board so she vol­un­teered her­self and be­came the chair­man.

Ma­haraj re­vealed that she was not too con­cerned about shoul­der­ing this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, as she has held a num­ber of ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions with oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions. She has been the sec­re­tary of the T&T Taek­won­do As­so­ci­a­tion, sec­re­tary of the Ju­nior Chess Fed­er­a­tion, third vice pres­i­dent of the Chess As­so­ci­a­tion and she found­ed the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion's Cen­tral branch.

Ma­haraj de­scribed her tenure as chair­man of the scout troop at St Mary's Col­lege as "a whirl­wind ride" and said she par­tic­u­lar­ly en­joyed some of the big­ger re­spon­si­bil­i­ties the group had to deal with.

She point­ed to their in­volve­ment in drag­onboat rac­ing and the es­tab­lish­ment of a drag­onboat team for the Chi­nese Bi­cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tions and Re­gat­ta in Jan­u­ary 2007 at the Kayak Cen­ter, Ch­aguara­mas. "Every oth­er Fri­day dur­ing the term the boys go down to Cha­gara­mas to kayak. Be­cause they were pro­fi­cient at kayak­ing, they were asked to try out the drag­onboat to see what it was like pad­dling a dif­fer­ent type of ves­sel."

She said that one of the cor­po­rate spon­sors pur­chased two boats but on­ly had one team at the time and made a re­quest for the scouts to form a team for the sec­ond boat. The scouts col­lab­o­rat­ed with some girls from oth­er schools and formed the team, An­gel & Saints.

They were al­so able to get sport­ing celebri­ties like box­er Ria Ram­nar­ine, taek­won­do medal­ist Cheryl Ann Sankar, swim­mers Shan­ice Mo­hammed and Chan­tal Fitz­patrick and oth­ers to join their team. Ma­haraj said An­gel and Saints were the youngest team in the re­gat­ta and placed 14th out of 30 teams.

"In this six-year tenure we have done a lot, first of all launch­ing a team in a drag­on boat re­gat­ta, send­ing the scouts to two jam­borees, one in Eng­land and the oth­er in Swe­den." Some of St Mary's scouts ac­com­plish­ments dur­ing her time in charge al­so in­clude pro­vid­ing boat mar­shalling as­sis­tance to the T&T Drag­on Boat Fed­er­a­tion at its an­nu­al re­gat­tas at Ch­agu­ra­mas and Point Fortin, as­sist­ing the Forestry Di­vi­sion and tur­tle war­dens in Fish­ing Pond with tur­tle con­ser­va­tion ef­forts dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son from March to Au­gust. In 2010, they worked with Ca­noe­ing and Kayak­ing as­so­ci­a­tion and the T&T Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee to in­tro­duce dis­abled peo­ple to kayak­ing.

"Scout­ing is about learn­ing life skills in a fun way, hav­ing ad­ven­tures, young peo­ple be­ing able to share a space to­geth­er and get along with each oth­er de­spite their dif­fer­ences." It is this ide­ol­o­gy and fo­cus that has kept Ma­haraj in tune with the scout­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. On Oc­to­ber 13, her ded­i­ca­tion and loy­al­ty to the move­ment would once again be re­ward­ed when she was elect­ed to the na­tion­al board of the Scout­ing As­so­ci­a­tion at its 101st An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing. Her role is to as­sist the Pres­i­dent and the 1st Vice Pres­i­dent and al­so to make the scout move­ment more vis­i­ble to the pub­lic.

Ma­haraj how­ev­er stat­ed that hold­ing these po­si­tions are not with­out their dis­ad­van­tages and chal­lenges but that does not de­ter her spir­it. "The rea­son why I re­al­ly stayed on was be­cause there were many times when I was feel­ing over­whelmed be­cause I wasn't get­ting the sup­port and so many dif­fer­ent ob­sta­cles were in the way but one of the things that re­al­ly kept me go­ing was ac­tu­al­ly the boys. I saw them grow, saw them ma­ture, saw them change, saw them change their whole way of think­ing."

She is hop­ing that her new­ly elect­ed po­si­tion with the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion will be a con­ti­nu­ity of the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion she has start­ed with 6TSS. "I know go­ing for­ward, we are plan­ning to have a lot more ac­tiv­i­ties to keep the in­ter­est of the scouts so they don't leave. As you've seen here the boys in Form 1 are en­thu­si­as­tic but by the time they get to Form 3 they've start­ed to form groups, limes and friend­ships.

They en­joy it and they feel a part of the move­ment." She ex­plained that in­volve­ment in sports, school and oth­er ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tives are an­oth­er rea­son for the ear­ly ex­it of some boys from the scouts as time man­age­ment and pri­or­i­ties have to be con­sid­ered.

Ma­haraj not­ed that those who stay have in­creased dis­ci­pline for their scout­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and to­wards their life in gen­er­al. "They have to have the dis­ci­pline, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to scout­ing, they have a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline with the train­ing for their sport and it tends to feed in­to their stud­ies and school work."

Ma­haraj said there has been a de­cline in mem­ber­ship for scout­ing in this coun­try and the As­so­ci­a­tion we are try­ing to build up again." While she could not give an of­fi­cial rea­son, Ma­haraj said she be­lieved that tech­no­log­i­cal dis­trac­tions and the mod­ern lifestyle are ma­jor de­ter­rents to boys stay­ing com­mit­ted to scout­ing.

"We've seen the trends in our group, there are a lot of dis­trac­tions out there such as com­put­ers and at this stage, I think it has to be ac­cept­able, the guys are go­ing through pu­ber­ty and are try­ing to find their niche, so they tend to ex­per­i­ment.

"They will try the scout­ing and say they don't en­joy the out­door ac­tiv­i­ties but they have no prob­lems with hav­ing the meet­ings and they'll en­joy when we're hav­ing a cook but then when you take some of them out of their com­fort zone and put them to camp in the open it is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry."

Ma­haraj ex­plained that some of the things that keep boys who stay in­ter­est­ed is the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing out­doors and de­vel­op­ing self suf­fi­cien­cy.

"A lot of the guys, we have found love the scout­ing sim­ply be­cause, they don't get to use a torch, cut­lass and big knives at home but they have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to wield a cut­lass to cut bam­boo."

She sug­gest­ed that in the fu­ture the move­ment might have to start giv­ing badges for com­put­er based skills and crafts to keep up-to-date and hold the in­ter­est of the younger gen­er­a­tions to come.