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| Romania’s Scouts |
| (2011-09-14) |
| Last updated: 2011-09-19 16:20 EET |
Shortly after its world emergence upon the initiative of Lord Baden-Powell, the scout movement made its appearance in Romania with the first scout groups established in Blaj, Brasov and Bucharest. Several years later, during the First World War, the Romanian scouts went behind the front lines to replace medical personnel, telegraphers and message runners in emergency situations. Their valor and sacrifice prompted the authorities to erect a monument in their honour in Tecuci, eastern Romania, which is arguably the only one of its kind in the world.
Sadly in 1937, king Carol the second dismantled the organization and things remained unchanged until the communist time. In 1990 the scouts started reorganizing themselves and since 1993, the ‘Romania’s Scouts’ national organization has been the only scout organization readmitted to the World Scout Organization.
In order to mark the increasing importance of the scout spirit in Romania, in August this year the locality of Saliste, in central Romania, hosted the fifth National Jamboree, called RoJam. The word jamboree allegedly comes from ‘Swahili’ originally meaning a noisy but friendly get-together; and so was the get-together in Saliste, which involved the participation of over 1000 scouts from seven countries such as the Czech Republic, Spain, France, Italy, Israel, Portugal, the Republic of Moldova and of course from Romania. Scouts have this year met in Romania to learn how they can contribute their abilities and traditional values to getting sustainable development.
Cristian Moldovan, press officer with the national Scout organization gave us a sample of the atmosphere at the latest jamboree: “We have a sustainable development village, with 60 workshops held either by scouts themselves or by our partners from various NGOs. At the same time we stage scouts activities, where we apply some of the strategies we have developed since the beginning of our movement, around 1910-1920. We build up wooden structures; take up mountain hikes and other activities combining physical and intellectual effort. We’d also like to get kids emotionally involved in projects, in order to cover all the six areas of children’s personal development.”
Children and teenage scouts are being taught how to offer assistance to local communities and try to improve a situation, which looks helpless at first – just the way they do out in the forest by using only rudimentary means.
Here is Cristi Moldovan again: “Scouting practically means development at a local level, and that’s the most important level. In local communities, we have groups of scouts, who get involved both in their proper development and in the development of local communities through ecological and social projects. They identify local problems and children try to come up with solutions. For instance we ran a project in Cluj Napoca, where we had to refurbish a park and we’ve done that jointly with several NGOs.”
Youngsters from “Romania’s Scouts” Organization are divided in four age groups, scout cubs - with ages between seven and 7 and 10 years, venturers - with ages between 11 and 14 years, explorers between 15 and 18 years and seniors between 19 and 24 years. The last ones are those who are training to become scouts –leaders. We have talked to some of the scouts in order to learn what can attract a kid living in the 21st century to scouting. Ioana Petrea is a 16 years old high-school student from Deva, central Romania. She confessed she was impressed by the idea that she could make the difference and make the world a better place.
Here are some of her favourite scouting activities: “First and foremost it is the camps, which offer a huge range of activities to us, explorers. These may vary from mountain hikes, tyrolean or climbing. At the same time I am very much attracted to the social dimension of scouting, our involvement in community activities in a bid to improve the world we live in. We get involved in cleanup activities in order to rid the environment of waste and I participated in such a cleanup operation close to my city, Deva.”
Since she joined the scout organization, Ioana Petrea has noticed some differences between her, the other scout mates and other students her age: “I got the feeling while at school that the way in which we as scouts, - for there are several scouts in the same school – tackle some problems is very different than the rest of the students. When there is a problem coming up, most of the others are giving up saying there’s nothing to be done about it. We, on the other hand, have a different mindset; we believe that even if you are alone, you can do something to improve the situation. The fact that I have been working with kids my age, made me also more responsible.”
Combining the love of nature and simple ways of solving problems with the responsibility to face present-day challenges, scouting still seems to be an education alternative to the liking of many young people.
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