Risk management for scouts

9 February 2006- Scout Association representatives from Hong Kong, Korea, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Brunei, Filipino, Malaysia and China are meeting in Punakha to develop a guideline to formulate a risk management policy in relation to youth, especially scouts, in the region.

“When people talked about risk it is mostly associated with physical well being of the person,” said the area commissioner of the Singapore Scouts Association, Mr. Malcolm Tan Ban Hoe. “But in the current world youth face mental health, emotional, technological and financial risks, and there area also different forms of child abuse.”

Internet pornography, gambling and chatting were some of the technological risks while child labour and sexual abuse were some of the forms of abuses, he said.

Physical risks were involved during outdoor activities like hiking, camping and trekking and through the spread of communicable diseases.

During the four-day workshop, resource persons will brief scout association representatives on the different kinds of risks and on identifying, classifying and managing risks. Participants will also share experiences of the risks they have faced.

According to the Asia-Pacific regional director for World Organisation for Scouts Movement (WOSM), Mr. S Prassanna Shrivastava, scouting activities, indoors as well as outdoors, involved a lot of risks.

“But we cannot keep away from these activities because of the risks,” said Mr. Shrivastava. “Therefore as a movement we need to provide all opportunities to the youth to enjoy getting educated through scouting in a safe environment.”

Mr. S Prassanna Shrivastava added that it was also important that this part of the world was made aware of scouting and risk management. Of the 28 million scouts around the world 18 million were in the Asia-Pacific region.

Although the workshop aims at coming up with a common, universally applicable risk management guide, participating countries have the freedom to adopt it or not. The guideline, resource persons said, could be used in preparing a risk management policy in the context of the country adopting it.

The other objective of the workshop is to equip the participants with basic knowledge and skills of risk management.

The workshop organised by the Bhutan Scouts Association with assistance from Save the Children is a follow up of a workshop that took place in Singapore in 2003, which discussed how to come up with a risk management guideline.

According to the workshop director, Wangchuk Namgyel, Bhutan became the member of WOSM in 1999 and has more than 19,000 scouts between the ages of 6 to 25 years at present. There are about 700 scoutmasters in the country and schools throughout the country have scouts.

About 27 scoutmasters are also undergoing a training of trainers course in life skills in Khuruthang, Punakha.