Regional membership growth review workshop underway

Macau, 7 September 2012 – One of the main priorities for the current triennium in the Asia-Pacific Region is membership growth and some serious work had been carried out in the past three years.

This review workshop, following the first workshop in 2010 in Malaysia, will capture the growth of membership of National Scout Organizations (NSOs) in the region and will recommend strategies to sustain it in the coming years.

The workshop is being held at the National Headquarters of the Scout Association of Macau (SAM) from 7th September with 22 participants who hold key Scouting positions in 10 NSOs: Bangladesh, Scouts of China, Hong Kong, India, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

The workshop is under the direction of the Scout Association of Macau International Commissioner Ms. Francisca Vong with the guidance of the APR Membership Growth Sub-committee. The four-day workshop involves sharing of work accomplished in this area, the successes and challenges encountered in the last three years.

Mr Edward Kou Chi-Leong, President of the Supervisory Council of SAM, in his welcome address, thanked the regional office for giving SAM the honour to host such an important event.

Workshop Director Ms Francisca Vong explained the aim and objectives of workshop which are to address issues pertaining to membership growth; to analyse regional membership trends since the 2009 regional conference, and to recognise the role of NSOs in sustaining their membership growth.

At the opening ceremony, Dr Jeffrey Ho, Vice-chairman of the Membership Growth Sub-Committee gave an overview of the workshop, while Regional Director Mr Abdullah Rasheed thanked all NSOs for their cooperation in addressing the membership growth strategy.

Before the workshop started, the Membership Growth Sub-Committee held its regular meeting and made recommendations to recognize NSOs with significant membership Growth in two categories: One category is a group of NSOs that increased membership annually and the other is the group that implemented the Membership Growth Guideline in a remarkable way.

The selected NSOs for the two categories will be recognized for their performance at the forthcoming Regional Scout Conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh this November.

For the evaluation of this membership growth, 20 NSOs or 80% have submitted the completed tool which summarizes the actions taken by their NSOs in membership growth strategy, as well as increase in members and retention.