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Do any of you have experience with the Messenger of Peace award (which goes around the World Scouting crest)?

I'm reading about the program on the BSA web site, and I'm not really sure what projects should and should not be regarded as meeting the criteria.

In the requirements section  (https://www.scouting.org/international/messengers-of-peace/)  , it says...

In terms of the MOP initiative, peace encompasses three dimensions:

  1. The personal dimension: harmony, justice, and equality
  2. The community dimension: peace as opposed to hostility or violent conflict
  3. Relationships between humankind and its environment: security, social and economic welfare, and relationship with the environment

Any Scout or Scouter who participates in a project that has had a significant impact on the community in any one of the three dimensions above can qualify as a Messenger of Peace.

The requirements seem pretty straightforward, and it seems like most troops would have plenty of Eagle projects or Hornaday projects that might qualify....and since the qualification is determined at the unit level, a scout shouldn't have to ask anyone other than his Scoutmaster.

But I get confused when I read the FAQ: https://www.scouting.org/international/messengers-of-peace/faqs/     Especially that section about "examples"...

Can you give me some examples of qualifying projects?
Projects like these inspired the Messengers of Peace initiative:

  • Scouts in El Salvador working to disband violent street gangs
  • Scouts in New Orleans working on the ground to rebuild post-Katrina New Orleans
  • Scouts in the Great Lakes region of Africa running an inter-ethnic peace education project
  • Scouts in Sierra Leone rebuilding their communities following a decade of civil war
  • Scouts in Ireland bringing young Catholics and Protestants together
  • Scouts in Haiti doing work in rescue, relief, and rehabilitation after the deadly earthquake in 2010

Yikes!!  Talk about BIG projects!

And to think, here I've been encouraging scouts who just want to build another park bench to try thinking bigger.  I'll have to point them to this FAQ.

 

Soooo, what I want to know is, what do you think makes a service project qualify for this award?

Would just about any Eagle or Hornaday award qualify?  Only big ones?  Only ones that confound presidents and popes?

 

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32 minutes ago, mrkstvns said:

...

Can you give me some examples of qualifying projects?

...

Yikes!!  Talk about BIG projects!

...

Soooo, what I want to know is, what do you think makes a service project qualify for this award?

Would just about any Eagle or Hornaday award qualify?  Only big ones?  Only ones that confound presidents and popes?

Don't feel so overwhelmed. Every World Scout Jamboree participants got one. Evidently teaching Brits that you can make tea with a little cold water and sunshine and no milk counts as a BIG project. :D

A patrol who assembles a simple-minded bench for a community development group may very well qualify. The How to Become a Messenger of Peace Guide breaks it down in simple terms for youth. Bring it to a meeting and challenge your scouts to see if anyone would want to go for it. There are probably some really good ideas rolling around in some of those heads. Honestly, it takes very little to confound presidents and popes.

Note to self: I need to talk to that scout who, with his classmates, made a "welcome guide" for new immigrants to our neighborhood. The mayor of a neighboring town then invited him and his buddies to distribute them personally during a naturalization ceremony.

Edited by qwazse
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We do invasive species removal to win this award. There are no rules around how big the project is and I find that this award is more to share vision of scouting throughout the world.

 

 

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7 hours ago, shortridge said:

The whole thing strikes me as largely a joke. I fail to see the point of yet another doo-dad for a service project.

I guess the point of it is that it is a worldwide award, that any scout in the world can earn, and so making the point that we're part of something bigger than our patrol/troop/unit/group/district/county/state/country.

 

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11 hours ago, shortridge said:

The whole thing strikes me as largely a joke. I fail to see the point of yet another doo-dad for a service project.

 

3 hours ago, ianwilkins said:

I guess the point of it is that it is a worldwide award, that any scout in the world can earn, and so making the point that we're part of something bigger than our patrol/troop/unit/group/district/county/state/country.

 

Some countries do not have the resources we have in the USA. Any patch is a big deal. I remember trading with Croatian Scouter a plain and simple Scouts Croatia strip for one of my fully embroidered CSPs. She was embarrassed by her trade, but I told her it will be a good reminder of my time working with her. 

In all honesty I have seen no one wearing them locally in my district. I've seen a few at council activities. Most people wear the anniversary rings as once they get put on, they tend to remain as they are a pain to sew.

Regarding an award that is suppose to remind us that we bigger than just our country, I thought that was the purpose of the World Crest. I remember earning the World Crest back in the day, and remember the exact day that everyone could wear it due to a policy change with the BSA: August 1, 1989. I was on a bus in Canada about to earn a second WC when they made the contingent leader made the announcement about the policy change..

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14 hours ago, shortridge said:

The whole thing strikes me as largely a joke. I fail to see the point of yet another doo-dad for a service project.

Service hours for rank advancement strike me as largely a joke. But there they are.

I think MoP is less about the service and more about becoming more intentional as you go through life. In this decade, the award has synced up with Project 2030 SDGs -- an initiative which, if Citizenship in the World merit badge were really about world citizenship, our scouts would learn. If you have your scouts work through WOSMs MoP materials, it gets them a perspective how a small amount of service at home means a lot of service world-wide.

The point of the ring patch? Well, I suspect it's to make up for removing the requirements for the crest!

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1 hour ago, qwazse said:

The point of the ring patch? Well, I suspect it's to make up for removing the requirements for the crest!

Actually the International Youth Exchange Patch took the World Crest's place from circa 1990 to 2012 (I got mine 1995 retroactively since the patch wasn't out in 1989).  Currently it is the International Spirit Award.  http://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/award/international_spirit-2378.asp

 

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1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Actually the International Youth Exchange Patch took the World Crest's place from circa 1990 to 2012 (I got mine 1995 retroactively since the patch wasn't out in 1989).  Currently it is the International Spirit Award.  http://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/award/international_spirit-2378.asp

 

Now, why didn't anybody post a flyer about this at Jambo? Oh, that's right, no bulletin boards. :o

Thanks! I will seriously consider this. As a first step, here's an official page https://www.scouting.org/international/recognitions/ and the links to the application with accurate URLs to the newsletters.

 

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On 10/3/2019 at 5:34 AM, Eagle94-A1 said:

Regarding an award that is suppose to remind us that we bigger than just our country, I thought that was the purpose of the World Crest. I remember earning the World Crest back in the day, and remember the exact day that everyone could wear it due to a policy change with the BSA: August 1, 1989. I was on a bus in Canada about to earn a second WC when they made the contingent leader made the announcement about the policy change..

But now that the World Crest is standard issue and no longer earned, nobody knows what it's for. I think the Messengers of Peace award fills the hole that the World Crest used to when it needed to be earned and therefore the people who wore it knew what it meant. 

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10 hours ago, Liz said:

But now that the World Crest is standard issue and no longer earned, nobody knows what it's for.

Really?  What about you others, do you think your scouts know what the World Crest is for?

In my ignorance of current BSA custom,  I have made sure that all new scouts in our Scouts BSA troop know what all the parts of the World Crest symbolize.  (The discussion can fit nicely in the scoutmaster minute section of a meeting, after an influx of new scouts.)  

Probably that is just the influence of my WAGGGS/GSUSA-TOFS background.   The international friendship/brotherhood aspect of scouting is important to me.  And really, there are some decided similiarities between the WAGGGS trefoil and the WOSM fleur-de-lis.

 

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Messengers of Peace Service Project Ideas

Peace is more than the absence of war. It encompasses harmony between individuals, between communities, and between humankind and the environment. A Messengers of Peace service project is defined as any project that touches on one of these dimensions of peace:

  1. The personal dimension: harmony, justice, and equality
  2. The community dimension: peace as opposed to hostility or violent conflict
  3. Relationships between humankind and its environment: security, social and economic welfare, and relationship with the environment

Here are sample project ideas:

Personal Dimension

  • Host a holiday party for children of prison inmates.
  • Collect books and magazines for inner-city schools.
  • Conduct entertainment programs, including skits and plays, at a nursing home.
  • Make and donate gift boxes to be distributed by Feed the Children.
  • Assist organizations that provide home maintenance services for those in need.
  • Clean a Habitat for Humanity house before the family moves in.

Community Dimension

  • Create a community prayer garden.
  • Replace graffiti with peace-related murals.
  • Host conflict-resolution workshops in a local school.
  • Plan a sports tournament that brings together kids from different segments of the community.
  • Serve as “victims” for a county EMT or first responders training course.
  • Assist in the packaging of medical supplies for developing countries.

Environmental Dimension

  • Clean up a campground, a local park, a river, or a school parking lot.
  • Assist with a shoreline-restoration project.
  • Collect and dispose of household chemicals, batteries, and other potentially dangerous waste products from the residences of shut-ins.
  • Remove invasive species and plant native trees in a park.
  • Volunteer at a community recycling center.
  • Clear brush from fire buffer zone.

BSA Messengers of Peace Service Project Ideas

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