Hannah Lord is a Rover from Erindale Rover Crew and Michael Freeman a Venturer from Stromlo-Forest Venturer Unit in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The ACT Branch is leading Australia in establishing the Scouts of the World Award, and Michael and Hannah are both actively involved as members of the Cottermouth Scouts of the World Base Committee. Michael ran the first Australian Discovery in July 2006, which focused on Peace and our local Indigenous community. Hannah was also the Team Leader of the first Australian Scouts of the World Voluntary Service. This youth-led project saw 42 people travel to the Solomon Islands in October 2006 to complete two weeks service with the local Scouting community and the Red Cross School for the Disabled.

Celso is a young Scout leader in Angola, a large but poor African country. Angola is one of only 8 countries in the world where the wild polio virus is still present. Many children are victim of this virus, which attacks the nervous system and provokes paralysis.

The Scout Association in Mongolia began as recently as 1991, with 39 Scouts making their Promise. The Scout Association now has over 8,000 members and in ten years over 56,000 Scouts have passed through its ranks. This success is primarily due to the strong social commitment of Scouting in Mongolia.

The Roma community, often referred as ‘gypsies’, is seen as a problem in most European countries, due in part to their nomadic and exotic culture. In eastern and central Europe the Roma community is the region’s most marginalised and vulnerable minority. In Slovakia, the Roma population is around half a million, from a total population of five and a half million people.

Scouts in France fight again the fire froma SW Base. Lise is 17 years old. She is team leader and member of a Venture-Scout unit in Belgium. Next summer, his unit will camp in Provence, in the south of France. This is a very attractive region for tourists: It is sunny most of the time, with beautiful old villages, large forests, good wine and the sea is not far.

Rose, Fatou, Poppin and Edward: two young women and two young men living in Nairobi. They are some of the key Scout leaders supporting the “Extension Scout Programme” in Kenya. Let us discover what they are doing.

Many young people in El Salvador are trapped in a culture of violence. This is due to the civil war maintained for many years until the peace treaties signed in 1992, and also to the lost of society values caused by the internal migration from land to the cities and the accelerated urban development from which the formation of youth gangs originated.

Gilbert was a young Rover leader when over one million Rwandan refugees streamed into Goma in 1996 from the genocide and terror of Rwanda and Burundi, from the long, arduous, barefoot walk from home villages which had been ethnically cleansed, and harassment by bands of soldiers and officials. The place allocated to the refugee camps was an unforgiving place, on the slopes of an almost dormant volcano. Within days, it turned to a death-trap, with insufficient water, food,
shelter and simply not enough space.

In Alexandria, Egypt, there is a well-equipped Sea-Scout centre, located in the West District of the city. When doing their activities, the Sea-Scouts noted that a number of young children were working in the various workshops established in this district, one of the most deprived of the city.