Italy: 100 years of Scouting

A hundred years from its founding, the Boy Scout movement celebrates that first outing to Brownsea island, where on the 1st of August 1907 Baden Powell and 20 boys of different ages and social classes set out the scouting principles that still hold fast today. From Milan to Rome, here are the stories of five city dwellers who owe the success of their careers to the values learned during their days spent scouting the woods.

Giuseppe Brambilla, 52, today he is the managing director for Carrefour Italia, a company that employs more than 30 thousand people. ?To succeed in business you must be sure of one thing: were you want to get to? he says, which is one of the prerequisites for a successful hike. One of the Boy Scout adventures, not an obligatory one, is a twenty four hour long trample through the shrub, across streams, avoiding ditches. ?My cool headedness in situations where my company has been under attack is owed to that adventure? explains the CEO.

Belgian by birth but Milanese by adoption, Matteo De Brabant at 33 is the head and founder of Jakala, a leading relationship marketing company that employs 220 people with a turnover of 100 million euros. As the company?s name suggests, he draws much inspiration from Kipling?s The Jungle Book, a bible for Boy Scouts. We asked him whether founding Jakala at 24 made him an enfant prodige, to which he replied ?I wouldn?t know, certainly being a Boy Scout trains you to be a leader from the age of 18, it is inevitable when you are responsible for days on end of 7 or 8 year old children you must take home safe and sound?. De Brabant has also drawn his strategy from the Scouts: ?The boys I used to take around then are my clients today to whom I must offer a good service, my colleagues are my Scout companions with whom I must collaborate regardless of personal affinities, and shareholders are what parents were, those one had to answer to?.

Sarah Mancini, who at 37 is already in charge of Communications at Turin?s Industrialists Union, agrees: ? Working together means understanding how to relate to one?s boss and to co-workers?.

?I would give my life for the service of others? says Lamberto Bertolè, a 33 year old social entrepreneur who spent 15 years as a Boy Scout. Service is perhaps the scouting word ?par excellance? . Among the many social activities he is involved in locally Lamberto works with a community for young offenders and a circuit that helps older young offenders once they leave prison. ?If it weren?t for the Boy Scouts none of this would exist: the scouts take you out into the world and put you in touch with worlds that are distant from the ones you are from?.

Mariapia Garavaglia, vice-president of the International Red Cross Federation and Deputy Mayor for Rome says: ?There is nothing I can do about it, I can?t help but be a scout!?. The experience of learning how to endure hunger, thirst, to sleep in a tent and eat with ones hands has marked her and she ?doesn?t suffer the small discomforts that come with the fulfilling of missions in the world?s poorest countries?.

More info:

• www.scouting.org