“Visibility of Scouting through community projects can encourage a Scout to bring in others to join Scouting,” said National Chief Commissioner of Malaysia and Consultant to the Regional Scout Committee, Dato’ Kaharudin bin Haji Mo’min, at the APR Workshop on Membership Growth which runs from 20th to 23rd May 2010 in Johor Bahru City, Malaysia.
 
“Growth in numbers is very important as we want more young people to become Scouts. Scouting is a way to show respect and reach out to others” Dato Kaharudin added.
Being the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific Region, the workshop had the full support of the Johor State Government and gathered 40 participants from Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Scouts of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
Regional Scout Committee Vice Chairman Dr Mohammed Mukhyuddin bin Sarwani, Programme Sub committee Vice Chairman Mr Rajalingam Ramasamy, Sub-Committee members Nasaruddin Shamsuddin and Radzwan bin Hussain, including Persekutuan Pengakap Malaysia National and State Commissioners were among the guests present. Johor State Commissioner Tuan Haji Yaacob B. Karim represented the state level.
In this workshop, leaders working on membership growth share and exchange ideas that could translate into strategies. The goal is to find ways of achieving the regional growth target by 2012 by increasing 4% every year. One way to do this is to monitor and sustain the growth by strengthening the recruitment and retention of members.
Heading the overseas team is Membership Growth Sub-Committee Chairman Ms Emma Barker (Australia), who is closely working with Dr Jeffrey Ho (Singapore), Prof Dr. Ahmad Zaki and Nasaruddin (Malaysia). Mohamed Azlan bin Abdull Jalil is the one facilitating the workshop, assisted by APR Director Thian Hiong Boon.
A session on membership registration tool will be presented by Kevin Camilleri, who is a Project Manager from the European Region, responsible for developing the membership management tool which is now used in selected NSOs in Europe. Following the introduction of the tool, all NSOs will be given a soft copy of the package for them to study and adopt for their own NSOs.
In conjunction with the workshop, the Membership Growth Sub-Committee is also holding its formal meeting where eight of its members are workshop participants.
Having four YAMG members at the workshop: Mohd Hafiz Ariffin (Malaysia), Krittee Tantivisikul (Thailand), Oliver Zikai Lim (Singapore) and Dicky Lam Kwok Hei (Hong Kong), they spent time to meet and hosted video conferencing with three others who are not present. This video conferencing is the first “face-face” cum “Video Conference” meeting organized by YAMG members. A follow up meeting is being planned in Bangalore in conjunction with the 7th APR Scout Leaders Summit where all members are expected to attend.
source: http://www.scout.org/en/around_the_world/asia_pacific/information_events/news/scouting_visibility_strengthens_scouting_growth |