The Cub Scout move­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with oth­er cub scouts world­wide, cel­e­brat­ed 100 years of ex­is­tence on April 9. One such cel­e­bra­tion took place at the Women of the Soil head­quar­ters in Pa­lo Seco where 35 scouts and their lead­ers camped out ear­li­er this month. Cub scout leader Phillip Gar­den­er said: "We came to camp here years ago. We con­tact­ed Ena af­ter see­ing her in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle and since we are about know­ing your coun­try the Dis­trict Com­mis­sion­er sug­gest­ed here or Ma­yaro."

The 35 scouts de­part­ed Pa­lo Seco on April 13 af­ter hav­ing a grand camp­fire the night be­fore they left."

Gar­den­er said the dis­trict of Diego Mar­tin is al­so cel­e­brat­ing 40 years, so it was like a dou­ble cel­e­bra­tion."

Ma­halia Khan, as­sis­tant cub scout leader from Crys­tal Stream, stat­ed that a lot of ac­tiv­i­ties were planned for the five days, in­clud­ing: rope work; dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness; first aid; a lec­ture on the his­to­ry of scout­ing; safe­ty; hik­ing to the mud vol­cano; sing along and art and craft. They would al­so be learn­ing the art of back­woods­man cook­ing which is cook­ing with­out uten­sils. Al­so ac­com­pa­ny­ing the scouts were: An­gela Ce­lestain, dis­trict com­mis­sion­er of Diego Mar­tin; An­nette Vi­dale, as­sis­tant dis­trict com­mis­sion­er for ex­pan­sion at Crys­tal Stream; Wen­dell Wal­drop, as­sis­tant cub scout leader; and Sher­win White, cub scout leader of Di­a­mond Vale.

The Be­gin­ning of Scout­ing

Scout­ing's his­to­ry goes back to the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry to a British Army of­fi­cer, Robert Stephen­son Smyth Baden-Pow­ell. While sta­tioned in In­dia, he dis­cov­ered that his men did not know ba­sic first aid or the el­e­men­tary means of sur­vival in the out­doors. Baden-Pow­ell re­alised he need­ed to teach his men many fron­tier skills, so he wrote a small hand­book called Aids to Scout­ing, which em­pha­sised re­source­ful­ness, adapt­abil­i­ty, and the qual­i­ties of lead­er­ship, that fron­tier con­di­tions de­mand­ed. The Scout As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the na­tion­al Scout­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Scout­ing was found­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 1911 at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege and be­came a mem­ber of the World Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Scout Move­ment in 1963. The as­so­ci­a­tion has 4,176 mem­bers (as of 2010). T&T's Chief Scout is Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards.