BRITAIN: Scouts from across the globe yesterday celebrated Robert Baden-Powell's 150th birthday together with the 100th anniversary of the Scout movement he founded.
Scouts from Lebanon, Hong Kong, Korea, Romania and the UK gathered in London at the London Eye giant ferris wheel on the South Bank opposite the Houses of Parliament.
Those involved had taken part in a wide range of projects, including helping to rebuild Lebanon after the recent conflict, running a Scout group in a Hong Kong prison and planting a forest in North Korea.
The gathering also saw the launch of a book of Baden-Powell's writings. The book, Playing the Game, draws on his autobiography, pamphlets, articles, speeches and letters to friends and family. Inspired by how boys coped during the siege of the township of Mafeking during the Boer War, Baden-Powell started the Scouts with an experimental camp on Brownsea Island, Poole, Dorset, in 1907. The following year, he penned the scouting handbook, Scouting for Boys. Today the organisation has almost 28 million Scouts around the world, including in Ireland, where it is the largest youth organisation.
Naomi Wilkinson, a Scout from Manchester, said: "Baden-Powell's ideas on how to build a more peaceful world, which were written nearly 100 years ago, are as important to the world today as they were then, and hopefully the combination of this new book, and our World Scout Jamboree, will help to remind people of that.
"What's more, as testament to Baden-Powell's long-standing campaign to promote world peace, there are now more Scouts worldwide than men and women serving in the military."