In 2022, I was elected as the Free State Young Leader Representative. Honestly speaking, it was dream come true for me to be able to represent the Free State Youth. Since well my term started in October, I took the remaining three months to do my research and to do survey about the challenges we are facing in our Region.
In 2023, I wanted to address the challenges of no connection between the Districts in our Region, since well the only time we will meet its during the AGMs. This lead to the project called “Regional Youth Forum”, hosted in Clarens. This was the first time we met in one place as a Region after so many years, not because of the meeting but because of a Scout programme, with everyone involved. This event was attended by 104 participants. The theme of this event was, “RECONCILIATION”.
In 2024, we tried addressing the challenge of the Rover programme in Free State. Since well we only had 3 members invested but only one was active since their investiture in 2019, during the training done by Peter Le Roux and Joshua Kretzschmar. Since 2020, I have been trying out ways in which the Rover Programme in Free State could succeed and be visible. This lead to the project called “Free State Rover Camp”. In order to achieve this goal, I had to travel to all 3 Districts to do trainings and this trainings we called “Rover Imbizo”.
This is where Scouts from the age of 17 could train and be introduced to the programme called Rovers. After the completion of the trainings, preparations for Rover Camp began. The camp was hosted in Bloemfontein, where everyone from the age of 17 years old was invited, and only those that were 18 years old were to be invested as Free State Rovers. The theme of this camp was “New Chapter in the Free State”. The event was attended by 40 participants and 25 new Rovers were officially invested. This event was also attended by 2 members from Lesotho Scouts Association, and we were blessed by the presence of Chief Commissioner Mr. Gary Pienaar, Mr. Lawrence Stanton and Mr. Nathisvaran Govender.