To the editor,
As one of many in Halifax who volunteer their time on a regular basis, I was thrilled to see Lindsay McCarney's article "No purchase necessary" on volunteering, in The Coast, Dec 6, 2007.
However, as a great grandson of the founder of scouting and guiding, Robert Baden-Powell, I feel that three great organisations were conspicuously absent from the options given in the article.
Scouts Canada and Girl Guides of Canada provide a wonderful service to the
community through their programs.
They reconnect youth with nature and the environment (an urgent and vital issue in today's world). They also reconnect youth with their communities at the local, national and international levels. They reconnect youth with themselves, providing them with valuable life skills such as leadership and teamwork, and imparting valuable character traits such as self-confidence, integrity and a sense of duty.
Both movements are always in need of enthusiastic adult volunteers with the desire to help to develop the leaders of the future: Check out their websites to learn more and to sign up at ns.scouts.ca and
girlguides.ns.ca.
The third organisation that I feel was missing from the article was Halifax Regional Search and Rescue. HRSAR is a community-based volunteer organization dedicated to saving lives. The team remains on stand-by for incidents and civil emergency response 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Take a look at its website at hrsar.ca.
By Adam Baden-Clay
