Pres­i­dent and Chief Scout Paula-Mae Weekes re­mind­ed scouts that they have a spe­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be an ex­am­ple and bea­con of light among their peers.

She was speak­ing at the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T’s an­nu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of Na­tion­al Scout Youth Awards on Sat­ur­day.

“Young peo­ple in T&T and in­deed the world are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing crises of vary­ing de­grees. For some, the lure of fast mon­ey and easy gains wins out over am­bi­tion, hard work and the dili­gent pur­suit of goals.

“Oth­ers are dis­il­lu­sioned by what can ap­pear to be an un­fair and un­bal­anced sys­tem lack­ing in re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for so­cial progress and mo­bil­i­ty,” Weekes said.

She said a firm foun­da­tion of val­ues and ideals up­on which to stand was re­quired to weath­er the storms of youth­ful anx­i­ety and un­cer­tain­ty.

Weekes said as mem­bers of an or­gan­i­sa­tion which had for over 100 years pro­duced out­stand­ing cit­i­zens such as for­mer Pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke, olympian Man­nie Ramjohn and for­mer Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin, the scouts had a sig­nif­i­cant head start and a spe­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be an ex­am­ple and bea­con of light among their peers.

She said when they are be­set with dis­mal sto­ries they are able to draw from the val­ues em­bed­ded dur­ing their scout­ing jour­ney.