Touting a value system that promotes the principles of duty to God, duty to others and duty to self, the members of the Scout Association of The Bahamas took it as one of their duties to sensitize the public to the fact that the country needs peace.
The Scouts took to the streets on Saturday, chanting the need for peace and proclaiming that it began with them. During their parade through the streets, the Scouts members handed out "peace" flyers to members in the communities through which they traversed.
The recent peace march ended with a display of banners and flags and displays from the Royal Bahamas Defence Force Rangers, Scout Troopers and Royal Bahamas Police Force cyclists at Windsor Park Field at Wulff Road and East Street.
The Scout Association's recent peace march was a part of its contribution to the Messenger of Peace (MOP) project that highlights the scourge of crime and its negative effects on the country. MOP went into operation on Monday, and is used around the scouting world that numbers 40 million members.
The Scouts of the world have been answering that call for more than 90 years. Today, the Bahamian Scouts join Scouts in dozens of countries in the MOP initiative which offers resolution in solving conflicts in schools, building links between divided communities, teaching youngsters about health and wellness, and repairing environmental damage.
Scouts who complete MOP projects are eligible for a special recognition: a ring patch that goes around the World Crest. The patch symbolizes their participation in an ever-widening circle of Scouts who are not just visualizing world peace but are helping to make it a reality.
In 1920, just two years after the most terrible war the world had ever known, 8,000 Scouts from 34 countries came together for the first world jamboree. At the closing ceremony, Scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell called on participants to carry the spirit of the jamboree home so that they could help to develop peace and happiness in the world, and goodwill among all Scouts. Some five years after Baden-Powell held his experimental camp on Brownsea Island of the coast of England, Scouting reached The Bahamas late in 1912 -- introduced by Evelyn Lobb.
The Bahamas Branch of Boy Scouts as it was then called came into being in February 1913 -- and on March 17, 2013 marked its 100th anniversary with a church service at Ebenezer Methodist Church as the first religious organization to establish a Scout troop in the country was the Methodists, and as such the Bahamian organization thought it fitting to mark the occasion by attending a Methodist Church.
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