Portuguese Speaking and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
Sunday, September 9th, 2007Monday 30th July 2007
Monday saw the second day of activities for the participants and the day visitors, although I spent most of the morning in the Jamboree Media Centre, working on the weblog and making arrangements for getting access to some of the Scout video news broadcasts, which I hope to have published here shortly. As usual, I had to be at work in the Island Hub IST restaurant by 4:00 pm and I used the couple of hours I had available to wander around some of the displays in the main plaza area, ensuring that I left myself sufficient time for the walk back to the Island Hub.
My first visit was to the display area put on by the Portuguese speaking countries, where visitors could learn about the culture and history of the many places around the world that share Portuguese as their native language.
Scouts from Angola were showing traditional African items & instruments in a cultural display, Portuguese Scouts were offering belt branding, and the Brazilian team were embroidering a sign to highlight their hosting of the World Scout Conference and Youth Forum in 2011.
Most of the exhibition areas and country stands had a specially made stamp and visitors could collect these by getting their books stamped at each area they visited.
Here was my book being stamped in the Brazilian tent, although unfortunately, unlike some of the participants that did very well, I rarely remembered to get this done, so it is one of very few I have…
A few stands further away I met Helen Astaniou, who kindly explained to me all about the International Award for Young People . In the UK where I live this is represented by the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, a challenging series of tasks for young people (14 to 25) to undertake at three levels, Bronze, Silver & Gold.
The idea of the International Award programme is to bring together the various different schemes run in each country around the world to share ideas and offer mutual support, and to encourage countries that don’t yet offer their own scheme to get started. Despite the different local variations on the theme, most are based around the idea of 4 sections (Service, Adventurous Journey, Skills and Physical Recreation) with an additional Residential element at Gold level. Having achieved all three levels just before my 25th birthday (a few years ago now) I can strongly recommend it to anyone thinking of taking part. Many Scout Groups and other youth organisations also run the Award scheme, helping to bring its benefits to a wider audience.
On my way back to the Island Hub camping area for the International Service Team (IST) I got the opportunity to meet a number of participants as they toured the various displays or put on their own shows for the interest of the other participants.
Although most of the participants had only been on site a few days, you could already see many friendships being forged, as each of the contingents celebrated their respective cultures and traditions whilst getting the opportunity to learn about others.