Ringwood scouts to meet comrades in Malawi

FOUR Ringwood Scouts will be swapping the Ringwood countryside for the African scrub in an intrepid cultural exchange this summer.

William Andrews, Tim Skelley, Calum Allardyce and Ben White, all aged 18, from the First Poulner Explorer Scouts are going to Mzuzu in Northern Malawi to share scouting skills, the ideology of scouting and the fundamental ethos at the roots of scouting.

Now the youngsters have to raise £2,400.
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After a plant sale in the Furlong Shopping Centre in Ringwood the group raised nearly £500.

The initiative is partly funded by the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council, the First Poulner Scout Group, with donations from the Fordingbridge Co-op and a youth charity.

The four boys, are part of a larger group of 16 Poulner Scouts who are on a two and a half-week trip to meet the Malawi scouts and to make some desks and chairs for 400 pupils for the local school.

The prototype has been made in Ringwood, but the boys will be making the desks in Malawi from local sustainable materials.

The four Ringwood boys who are staying on, will be helping to create an eight acre camp site in Mzuzu.

The site was acquired by money raised by the First Poulner Scout Group and, when it is finished, they will be handing it over to the Malawi authorities for the local Scouts.

Meanwile William, Calum, Tim and Ben will spend about three months creating a football pitch, building a fire pit, damming a river to create a swimming pool and levelling land to make it suitable for tents.

The organiser of this trip Group Scout Leader Colin Andrews said: "We were very glad of this opportunity for the Furlong plant sale, to raise money for this trip.

"Eventually we would like to bring the Malawi Scouts back to Ringwood which we will do when we have raised enough money.

"We are already planning their trip in three years time. I think the boys see this as an adventure, but they will be doing some very useful work while they are away and I am sure they will never quite see life in the same way again. Everyone will be learning from this experience"