Sto­ries by KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As the era of Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes draws near­er to an end, she yes­ter­day of­fered a lit­tle smile to hun­dreds of chil­dren march­ing through the streets of San Fer­nan­do.

It was the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion’s last salute to Weekes, with their Chief Scout bid­ding farewell to Weekes in her last of­fi­cial du­ty with the body.

Na­tion­al Scout Com­mis­sion­er Mark Ains­ley John pre­sent­ed Weekes with the Chief Scout’s flag at the Bish­op Mendes Hall at Har­ris Prom­e­nade. It is an ho­n­our the as­so­ci­a­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly be­stows on their out­go­ing Chief Scout. The Pres­i­dent of the coun­try tra­di­tion­al­ly serves as the Chief Scout.

In a farewell mes­sage, Weekes said she had en­joyed cel­e­brat­ing Founder’s Day over the last five years, as it high­light­ed the life, vi­sion and lega­cy of the scout move­ment founder, Lord Robert Baden-Pow­ell. She said it al­so al­lowed her to ad­dress scouts, who were among the most dis­ci­plined, well-round­ed and civic-mind­ed peo­ple.

“To­day, I am ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a mix of emo­tions: grat­i­tude at hav­ing been an in­te­gral part of this com­mem­o­ra­tion, pride in your de­vo­tion to your coun­try and melan­choly, as this is the last oc­ca­sion on which I will speak to you as Chief Scout,” Weekes said.

She de­scribed the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion as the na­tion’s largest youth de­vel­op­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion which, she said up to her first brief­ing, had no mem­bers ever ap­pear­ing be­fore a court or who were in trou­ble with the law. She said the scout­ing move­ment stands head and shoul­ders above oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions and serves as an in­cu­ba­tor for young Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to grasp the con­cept of cit­i­zen­ship.

Weekes said it was the ho­n­our of a life­time be­com­ing T&T’s Pres­i­dent, and the ic­ing on the cake was be­ing Chief Scout, as she was nev­er a Brown­ie or Girl Guide in her younger days. It was a group she thought she had missed out on as a child. She al­so hopes the move­ment fol­lows a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple of “once a scout, al­ways a scout.”

“I would be very down­cast to find my­self ex­pelled from and bereft of your mem­ber­ship soon,” Weekes said.

For­mer scouts in­clude the first Pres­i­dent of T&T, Sir El­lis Clarke, Olympian Man­nie Ramjohn and for­mer Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain, Gor­don An­tho­ny Pan­tin.

Weekes said these scouts were a tes­ta­ment to the cal­i­bre of the move­ment.

Dur­ing a Founder’s Day ser­vice at the Pro-Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help ear­li­er, Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don stepped down from the al­tar and spoke di­rect­ly with the youths.

Gor­don re­told the sto­ry of the Lenten sea­son, when Je­sus Christ went in­to the wilder­ness to be tempt­ed by the Dev­il. He told them Chris­tians en­ter that wilder­ness by giv­ing up some­thing that would bring temp­ta­tion. He told them the way to re­sist temp­ta­tion was by pray­ing to God.

Gor­don told the chil­dren that be­ing a scout pre­pares them for the rest of his life as a lot of who he is to­day came from his time as a scout.

“It is a mag­i­cal world to be a scout, and it is a mag­i­cal time in your life to be a scout. That is a time you must cher­ish. Just like scouts: you train at your knots, you train at your camp­ing, you train at dif­fer­ent things to be­come bet­ter. Dur­ing the time of Lent, you train. And the train­ing that we do dur­ing the time of Lent is re­sist­ing temp­ta­tion,” the Arch­bish­op said.

He told them they should give up on neg­a­tive things and fo­cus on the pos­i­tive. Gor­don said if scouts spend less time on so­cial me­dia, they will find more time to talk to God. He al­so called on them to delete any neg­a­tive things they re­ceived on so­cial me­dia. For those who re­ceive pock­et change from their par­ents, he asked them to save some so they could share with the poor.

The As­so­ci­a­tion ho­n­oured Gor­don, San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my, re­tired Lt Cm­dr Kirk Jean Bap­tiste and sev­er­al oth­ers at the event.