The meeting today was our Annual General Meeting, much was discussed including details for our 80th Anniversary Exhibition which will be held in Kirkcaldy Museum from Friday 3rd till Sunday 5th June 2016. (more details will follow)
The present President and his fellow club management were all returned by a unanimous decision by members present.
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Ken Gilbert finished the afternoon by giving us a short but excellent display and talk on the Scout Movement, showing stamps, covers, letters, from various Jamborees around the world, Ken wore his scout top and scarf with a plaited leather woggle for the occasion.
Lieutenant General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell,
1st Baron Baden-Powell, ON GCMG GCVO KCB DL
(22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941)
Baden-Powell was the garrison commander during the subsequent Siege of Mafeking, which lasted 217 days. The garrison held out until relieved, in part thanks to cunning deceptions devised by Baden-Powell. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers pretended to avoid non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches.
During the siege, the Mafeking Cadet Corps of white boys below fighting age stood guard, carried messages, assisted in hospitals, and so on, freeing grown men to fight. Baden-Powell did not form the Cadet Corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege. But he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of Scouting for Boys.
The siege was lifted on 16 May 1900. Baden-Powell was promoted to Major-General,
and became a national hero.
In 1906 and 1907 Robert Baden – Powell, a lieutenant general in the British Army, wrote a book for boys about reconnaissance and scouting. Baden-Powell wrote Scouting for Boys (London, 1908), based on his earlier books about military scouting, with influence and support of Frederick Russell Burnham (Chief of Scouts in British Africa), Ernest Thompson Seton of the Woodcraft Indians, William Alexander Smith of the Boys’ Brigade and his publisher Pearson. In the summer of 1907 Baden-Powell held a camp on Brownsea Island (also archaically known as Branksea) is the largest of the islands in Poole Harbour in the county of Dorset, England to test ideas for his book. This camp and the publication of Scouting for Boys are generally regarded as the start of the Scout movement.
The World Scout Jamboree is a Scouting Jamboree of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, typically attended by several tens of thousands of Scouts from around the world, aged 14 to 17.
The first World Scout Jamboree was organized by The Boy Scout Association in London.
With exceptions for the war years, it has been organized approximately every four years, in the more recent years by the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), in different locations over the world. The 21st World Scout Jamboree in 2007 was held in Hylands Park, United Kingdom, and celebrated the Centenary of Scouting. The 22nd World Scout Jamboree was at Rinkaby in Sweden from 27 July 2011 to 8 August 2011. Ken showed us only 2 miniature sheets from the Cook Islands which were overprinted in gold and silver advertising the Swedish Jamboree, apparently the only country that issued stamps to celebrate the occasion. The 23rd World Scout Jamboree was at Kirara-hama in Japan. It opened on 28 July 2015, and closed 8 August 2015.
The Blair Atholl Jamborette is Scottish Scouting’s premier international event.
It brings together over 1,000 Explorer Scouts and Leaders from all over the world for a 10 day camp in a picturesque corner of highland Perthshire. Every 2 years since 1946 the tranquil grounds of Blair Castle have been transformed with participants from all over the world coming together to camp and share in fun, friendship, and a massive range of adventurous activities and challenges.