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Scouts movement turns 100

Essex: A warning to delinquents and the feckless: lock up your sons and daughters. In Essex, England, parkland usually graced by the rock bands and groupies of the music festival season, 40,000 brightly-clothed scouts from more than 160 countries on Saturday celebrated 100 years of the movement when Prince William and the Duke of Kent opened the 10-day World Scout Jamboree.

From Surinam to Taiwan, from Serbia to Libya, teenagers of all religions and all races were united under the scout promise and a shared experience: being misunderstood at school. “My friends say that scouts are gay. Everyone says that,” reckoned Rebecca Harding, 15, from south London.

During the 10-day, £ 20m jamboree, the scouts will undertake traditional “adventures”: a day of water sports and a day doing voluntary work in the community, entertaining the residents of old people’s homes. —

Guardian News & Media 2007

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