The acting Secretary-General and staff of the World Scout Bureau wish you all a happy and safe festive season and best wishes for 2008!

New York, 20 December - Secretary of the Africa Scout Youth Forum Steering Committee (2007-2010) Ms. Nikitta Dede Adjirakor from Ghana represented the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) at this year's annual meeting of the Global Youth Advisory Panel (GYAP) of the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA), which took place this week in New York.

The Global Youth Advisory Board was established by the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA) and is comprised of young people from all over the world between the ages of 15 and 24 who meet annually to give advice on promoting the needs and rights of youth within UNFPA. The panel members make comprehensive recommendations to UNFPA on policy making, programming and planning. Participants at this years meeting were from various youth organisations and country offices of the UNFPA.

The Governance Review Task Force met for three days in Geneva from to 14 to 16 December to prepare its report to the World Scout Committee. The meeting was very productive, and included discussions with the Chairman of the Constitutions Committee.

This meeting was planned some time ago to come at the end of all the discussions and consultations that members of the task force have had with National Scout Organizations at the six Regional Conferences in 2007.

During the first week of December, 15 to 20 representatives of World Scouting attended the first European/African Youth Summit in Lisbon (Portugal).The idea of this summit, which itself is a few years old, became concrete a little over a year ago, when a Governance Committee was created, coordinated by the North-South Centre of the European Council, that World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) and other International Youth Organizations took part in, as well as representatives of African and European youth platforms (the European Youth Forum, for example).

The Educational Methods Committee met on Sunday 18 November in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Scout Bureau to discuss the progress being made in the educational programmes, projects and events at world level.

The committee, chaired by Ana-Elisa Piubello, member of the World Scout Committee, is composed of a core team and leaders of five Task Teams (Adolescents and Young Adults, Adults in Scouting, Education for All, Environment Education and Spiritual Development), and is supported by staff from the department of Education, Research and Development.

On the 7th December the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) was re-elected to the Board and to the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations ( CONGO) for a period of three years, a position in which it has already served since 2003.

WOSM was also elected as Vice-President of CONGO. Through this, World Scouting strengthens its position in the world of civil society and with the UN.

Since Cyclone Sidr struck the south-east coast of Bangladesh on 15 November 2007, local Scouts have been working feverishly to respond to the urgent needs of the affected communities, where over 3,000 people have been killed and hundreds of others are still missing.

5 December - International Volunteer Day is an opportunity to thank the volunteers from around the world that support World Scouting through donating their time and talents in a whole variety of ways.
As 2007 marks one hundred years of the Movement, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have this year strived to help young people make the most of the Centenary through supporting many wonderful programmes and activities. The largest display of which took place at the 21st World Scout Jamboree in the UK in July, where 10,000 adult volunteers helped to plan and run a ten day event for over 30,000 young people.

Geneva, 1 December 2007 - The World Scout Committee announced the appointment of Mr Luc Panissod, 58, French, as the Acting Secretary General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, with effect from today. Luc Panissod is already very well known in World Scouting as he has been Deputy Secretary General since 1991. His area of responsibility was General Management and Finances. In this most demanding area, Luc has performed at the highest level and now looks forward to the latest and greatest challenge of steering Scouting at the start of its second century. Luc was awarded the Bronze Wolf in 1996 and has received several other Scouting awards.

This year, World AIDS Day, which takes place annually on December 1, will focus on leadership, the theme set by the World AIDS Campaign under the five-year slogan “Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise”.

Scouts around the world have been playing a key role in the fight against HIV/AIDS for a number of years, leading the way in their communities through peer education programmes, awareness campaigns and activities, aiming to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is also in line with Millennium Development Goal 6.