From 14th to 16th August in the City of Knowledge, Panama, the Inter-American ICCS Regional Scout Seminar took place, with the participation of 24 delegates from 12 different Scout associations, among them we can mention Scouting Antiano Curacao, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, Sweden, USA and so on.
The seminar hosted all the regional members of the ICCS regional committee and it also count with the presence of personalities from the scout ambiance as Mario Diaz Vice President of World Scout Committee.
In some workshops we had the visit of some of the Interamerican Scout Committee members as the former Chairman Mr Ronald Castro, the new Vice-President Fernando Brodeschi and Committee former member of the OSI. Mr. Jorge Katin former member of the Regional Scout Committee.
The Open Ceremony was charming mass with the participation of a Panamanian Youth Choir. The Mass was conducted by the National Chaplain Father Rafael Olmos and our World Chaplain Father Leo LeBlanc. It had an atmosphere of ecumenism and brotherhood where we could find dozens of participants of the Regional Scout Conference being part of this celebration.
The kick off of the seminar was perform by our Secretary Regional Dr. Rolando Rocha, who began the seminar inviting all participants to sing a song titled "Beyond the Sun", which became the anthem of the seminar and useful to break the ice among the participants.
Many of the lectures were very interesting, emotional and with a lot of participation.
Lectures as Maria Izabel Tongu’s in which we actively participate and remember the old days of Cub Scouts with songs and games, or the lecture of Diego Saez – COPASCA’s National Commissioner Scouts of Argentina, who shows us that being Scout and Catholic is an amalgam in which many of us are part of, our World Chaplain Father Leo LeBlanc performed another great lecture, with his charisma and charm, he stress the importance of the role of Chaplains in our Scout associations, Liliana Serrao in the same way she made us think about the role of the educators within our associations, another of the lecture and which was one of the most appealing ones, was the testimony of young Panamanian who told us the tragedies and troubles that he passes through, and thanks to the Catholicism and his will he could leave that world of violence and become an example for other young society, our Regional Treasurer Mario Lino was the one who explained, and introduced us New Guidelines on Religious and Spiritual Development launched by the world Bureau, Graciela Pitta showed us that the formula "Catholic plus Scouts is equal to dynamic games", with the hand of our Director of Communications & Media Daniel Nisttahuz we get informed about the various medias that ICCS AMERICA is using until now, and the further actions that the department will take in terms of multimedia and information.
The seminar ended Monday midday, with very good commentaries and many of the participants evaluated the workshop very favorable and many others learned about the objectives of the ICCS and our work at the region.
After the seminar and taking advantage of the Regional Conference, we hold several official meetings with many NSO, in order to strengthen our alliance with them and invite them to form part of our big family, among them we can mention: Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, Panama and others.
Likewise, we held a meeting with Alvaro Soares, National Scout Chief of Scouting in Uruguay.
Thanks to the magnificent efforts of Father Rafael Olmos had an official visit to the Archbishop of Panama, where we were interview by the Archbishop's communications center.
We also had the opportunity to install a small ICCS scout shop, where we sold the official merchandise of our Bureau.
We were part of many of the acts of the Inter-American Conference, as the opening of the Scout headquarters in the City of Knowledge, where we leave our memorial stone as a testimony of our presence.
Within the conference Mr. Robert Lynn, member of our regional committee, was on charge of a small information center and he was also who received some of the gifts that we were given during the course of the event.
We also had the opportunity to have a meet with the Uniao Escoteiros do Brasil (UEB), to define the last details of what will be our World Seminar in Curitiba the next January.
In brief we success in the seminar, since we made closer relationships with many of our fellow scouts.
Within the seminar we defined many of our goals and tasks within the region, yet more important was that we could further strengthen the work and tasks for the Catholic Scouting with all our partners.