JEDDAH: Representatives from the Saudi Arabian Boy Scouts Association have discussed plans to improve domestic training exercises in collaboration with their US counterparts, at a meeting between the two associations in Texas.
Dr. Abdullah bin Sulaiman Al-Fahd, the vice president of the Saudi scouts, and Allan Lamport, vice president of the US association, met to explore the viability of joint training programs in the fields of volunteering and disaster and crisis management.
They also discussed plans for Saudi participation in the upcoming 24th World Scout Jamboree, which will take place between July 22 and Aug. 2 in West Virginia, and will be co-hosted by the Boy Scouts of America, Scouts Canada and the Asociacion de Scouts de Mexico.
Lamport praised the Saudi association and its preparations for the event, which will follow the theme “Unlock a New World,” adding that the Saudi scouts’ interest in training members to help with crowd management during the Hajj and Umrah was in keeping with the World Scouting Initiative “Messengers of Peace,” established in 2011 to facilitate international peace movements and projects.
Today 18 countries from the Middle East and North Africa form the Arab Scout Region with a 19th, Western Sahara, hoping to join soon. The first Arab Scout Jamboree — a mass gathering of Scouts — took place in 1954 in Syria and the 32nd was held in early September in Algeria.
There are more than 50 million Scouts in the world and 28 million of them are Muslim. Indonesia alone has about 21 million Scouts. The Arab region, with 5 million, accounts for a tenth of the total global membership of what is the world’s largest voluntary organization for boys and girls, with a presence in every country except North Korea, China and Cuba.
The Saudi association joined the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) in 1963 and hosted the Arab Jamboree in Taif in 2000.