Value Of Guiding In New Countries

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31346, 17 April 1967, Page 2

Value Of Guiding In New Countries

The Girl Guide movement had a special value in the developing countries of the world. It was not intended as a means of impressing Western standards and Western ideals, but aimed to strengthen national good will and develop the movement within the national culture ... and at the same time it improved the conditions of their lives, said the World Chief Scout, Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, when she visited Christchurch on Saturday.

Lady Baden-Powell is head of the Girl Guide movement which has six and a half million members, embracing 81 different nationalities, has been approved by the Pope and prescribed by doctors as a course of physiotherapy for handicapped children.

In the 19 years since Lady Baden-Powell last visited New Zealand, the movement has expanded to remote parts of Africa and even to such isolated places as Tristan da Cunha. “Young African girls take to tiie movement like ducks to water, they are attracted by the friendship and competition. At the same time, they take back improved standards of cleanliness and hygiene to their villages.’ Guides also had an opportunity to improve the standard of living in a more “productive” manner. Every year a group of 30 guides from different countries met at a world centre in Mexico, for training in guiding activities. Each year they undertook a project of bringing help to the villages, teaching the children

games, and the women hygiene.

In Mexico they had successfully established the rabbit farming industry as a means of bringing a cheap meat supply to thousands of impoverished Mexicans. Wherever there were tragedies or difficulties the Girl Guide movement emerged as a stable force. During the last war, girl guides and boy scouts in Allied countries gave much of their time to helping on the home front, and last year a guiding group had emerged in Vietnam, said Lady Baden-Powell. Today it was the only uniform voluntary youth organisation spanning the globe. By uniting the young people around the world in a spirit of friendship and goodwill, guiding made a valuable contribution to world peace and international understanding, said Lady Baden-Powell. “We are international, interdenominational, interracial but non-political,” she said.

She cited “Thinking Day,” which had been instituted at a world conference in Poland in 1932, to spread the idea of friendliness and understanding, and had been celebrated

on February 22 (the birthday of both Lady Baden-Powell and her late husband) ever since.

Rabbit Farming

Guides and brownies all over the world “think” about their neighbours on that day. It begins as the day dawns in New Zealand, and generates waves of goodwill all over the world.

“As they think, they give a penny for their thoughts and the money is used for charitable purposes.” Guiding was adapted to the special needs of particular countries around the world but the pattern was always the same, said Lady BadenPowell. “My guides in the Arctic had no money, for Thinking Day, but they collected walrus teeth which could be carved and sent to be sold in America or Canada.” Steady Spread Although there had been no dramatic impetus to the movement in the 1950 s and 19605, there had been continual expansion and the pattern of future guiding promised to be exactly the same, said Lady Baden-Powell. “We have grown from nothing, with nothing, bit so long as a child is a child the idea of guiding with its friendship, interests, companionship and competition will continue to flourish. It encourages each girl to strengthen herself in body and mind against the spiritual background of the guiding movement.” Lady Baden-Powell spoke warmly of the extension section of the guiding movement which caters for the handicapped girls. “It brings joy and fellowship into the lives of girls who would otherwise be defrauded. “Doctors have prescribed it as a means of physiotherapy—or a spur to enthusiasm. “At the handicapped guide camp in Holland last year, many of the Swiss girls who had never seen the sea found they could learn to swim, even though they would never be able to walk.” Third Visit On this her third visit to New Zealand, Lady BadenPowell has been stirred by the number of senior guides who said they saw her on her last visit when they were still very junior members of the movement

“Everywhere one visits, one sees a new generation of guides,” she said.