Related Stories

• EirGrid plans for €500m power line to link Munster and Leinster
  
  
• Nursing Homes Week celebrated by Padre Pio Rest Home, Cappoquin
  
  
• Fermoy training to focus on young unemployed
  
  
• Ballyhooly playground due for completion – a call for final donations
  
  
• Lismore Heritage Centre being revamped to the tune of €300k
  
  
• Renovated community centre opened in Knocklong
  
  
• World Suicide Awareness Day Remembrance Hour – for those bereaved by suicide
  
  
• Tipperary Peace Convention awards
  
  
• Concerns over increase of ‘non-authorised’ collection and recycling of WEEE in Cork
  
  
• Tallow Horse Fair – traders and crowds strong for 2013 event
  
  
• Munster Rugby player James Coughlan teams up with Blackwater Motors
  
  
• CBS Primary Mitchelstown pupils embrace new school term
  
  

Chief Scout Michael John Shinnick, from Fermoy, who says it’s time our children got back to the great outdoors.

Being Ireland's Chief Scout is a busy job. Just ask Fermoy man Michael John Shinnick who has been doing it for five years now and is in his second term.

The highest elected member of Scouting Ireland, he heads up a national team, his work taking him across the country, doing everything from meeting with Government ministers as he did last week to having discussions with other upper level officials. He travelled to the UK recently for a meeting with the Scouting Association there and this weekend will see him in Cavan on scouting business.

A director of local company Micro Bio, the married father of two daughters is passionate about his scouting work and says he gets a great sense of achievement from it.

The official aim of Scouting Ireland is to encourage the physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual development of young people so they can achieve their full potential and, as responsible citizens, improve society.

Michael John thinks it's time our young people got back to the great outdoors. "The health benefits of spending quality time in the outdoors is enormous. Witness the growth in the number of people running, hillwalking and cycling as we seek to counteract the stress of living in 'austerity Ireland'," he points out.

With obesity in children becoming a significant issue, he believes its never been more important to enable young people to experience the fun, as well as the health benefits, of the great outdoors. And, he says, scouting provides the perfect place for young people to experience that in a safe and exciting way.

Every year over 40,000 young people in scouting get to camp in some of Ireland's most scenic locations as well as further afield. "They experience the outdoors, make friends and create their own adventures," Michael John says.

This year a group of 18 to 21 year olds is going to Canada, and a group of 10 adults were in Japan recently, checking it out ahead of a trip by an Irish group for a major jamboree taking place there in 2015. Working together in small groups, scouts develop practical skills they can be justifiably proud of. It also helps them develop great life skills, Michael John says "and resonates with where they are in their lives. It is," he explains, "Ireland's largest non-formal education movement."

Despite the lure of so many other different pursuits, scouting in Ireland has held its own with membership up from 32,000 ten years ago to its present 45,000. Michael John Shinnick, who was one of the first members of the Fermoy 18th troop back in 1967 and who went on to form a troop in Glanworth and reopen others in Buttevant and Doneraile. He has served in many positions with Scouting Ireland since and is credited with playing a big part in the development of scouting in Ireland. The Clancy Street native wants as many other boys and girls as possible to enjoy the experience of scouting, including the benefits of the great outdoors!

blog comments powered by Disqus