By Lucas Loh
The theme for 2019’s edition of the anticipated June Training Camp was “智仁勇”, held at Ubin Living Lab from 7th to 10th June. Throughout the camp, scouts grew, bonded and pushed themselves to the limit.
The rural surrounding of Ubin brought out the best of the scouts by allowing them to truly engage with nature. There were many skills taught during the camp, such as food identification, outdoor cooking and orienteering.
The scouts learnt to be more aware of their surroundings and natural hazards they had around them, as well as learnt to work better with each other. More importantly, they learned to be disciplined as a collective group so as to ensure the common good and safety of the scout troop in Ubin.
For many scouts, this was their first time learning to live and provide for themselves, and as a patrol, they worked together to provide the best camping standard so as to ensure they not only survived, but thrived in this unfamiliar rugged environment.
The camp was also a challenge for the Ventures unit as this was the first time the newly invested Secondary 4 ventures were helping to run a camp. This culminated in the challenge of building a tripod tower without any preparation beforehand and with whatever was available.
The view up there was stunning.
The camp ended with final results for best patrol and most outstanding scouts of each batch throughout the camp. Senior Patrol 1 was announced to have won best patrol, followed by Junior Patrol 2. Wyatt Oii from Junior Patrol 5 was nominated as best Sec 1, with Rayn Tan from Junior Patrol 3 as best Sec 2, Kaiser Koh from Junior Patrol 1 as most improved Sec 1 and Chua Yi Xun as most improved Sec 3.
However, far more important than the achievements the scouts got was the memories created, bonds forged and lesson learned throughout the 4-day 3 nights camp.