TAU TE NU MOTU ATEA" in Polynesian that phrase means "Find a happy Island". Scout club of travellers "Rose of Winds" has become that happy Island for many of us.

Beginnings...

The early days of our scout club "Rose of Winds" goes back long before the official date of our foundation, which is 30^thSeptember 2001. Five years prior to that date several of us had already camped with many scouts from Germany, USA, South-African Republic, Wales, Czech Republic and England.

There were only a few instructors and professional scouts at the beginning. The majority of the group were children and teenagers that were very new to the scout movement. One of the Instructors, who later became a commander of the club, was hm. Tadeusz Gwóźdź.

His fascination for the scouting movement and the idea of cooperation between the scouts from all over the world lead to the establishment of our club. The name of our club is not accidental; a common journey brought us together with the prospect of meeting even more new people from all over the world being our biggest motivation.

As we are inhabitants of the Wodzislawski district, our headquarters are based in the village of Mszana, which is located between two cities: Wodzisław Śląski and Jastrzębie Zdrój. Maszana has been chosen thanks to the director of the Local Centre of Culture, Mirosław Szymanek, who invited us to Mszana and helped us to open a scout unit in this field. The cooperation between the club and Mirosław continues to date and it is fruitful for both parties. We became close to the local community from the start. We helped organise different kinds of events, with the support of local people, one of which was breaking new records, which are recorded in the Polish Book of Records.

Operation...

Why we are not an ordinary organization?

Firstly our goal was to reach as many people as possible who did not participate in any kind of scouting movement. We were trying to encourage people to join our club by inviting them to take part in our camps and let them 'fall in love' with the adventure of scouting. We believe that we are a successful group because many of our present members are people who joined us in our early days. They earned many entitlements and some became the instructors. We presently are associated with the Polish Scout Movement of Silesia Region.

Every winter holiday we organize day camps for non-members of our club. We are also cooperating with non-government funded organizations such as the Polish Association of the Blind. We are very old and good friends of the branch in Wodzisław Śląski.

We regularly participate in events organized by the association. We believe that in this way we become more open to other communities and other people. Our scouts also take part in cultural the life of Mszana. 'Theatre under the sky', folk events and football matches are only a few of many events we participate in every year. During all that time we try to promote our scout movement with the idea of being and travelling together. We also organize English courses in London for our secondary school students.

We have also been invited to many schools to give speeches about our club; journeys we have taken and plans for the future.

Every year we organize the Geographical Competition and we are a very proud to be it’s sponsor.

Purposes...

One of the main purposes for forming the club was to make the scouting movement more popular. We have put very small communities, with no scout clubs, such as Mszana, on the map using 'white dots'. Looking back, we can see, that thanks to our efforts, there are many new scout groups within our district. We have never stopped working; we are growing rapidly and our next goal is to remove all 'white dots' from the map of our district. Through slide shows in schools and geographic courses, we try to persuade audiences that the scouting movement is not only about 'sitting in the woods' but it is also a great opportunity to meet very interesting people and travel to very attractive places.

Journeys...

From the start and with the idea that 'journeys educate' our scope was to organize as many trips as possible. During the seven years of our existence we visited Croatia, Germany, San Marino, Great Britain, Greece, Holland and Czech Republic. Our own country is also very well known to our club. We visited Kotlina Kłodzka, Beskidy, Podkarpacie, Ziemia Lubuska and Wielkopolska many times.

We are very proud of the fact that many of our scouts have become sworn scouts in many distant and exotic places. As it is well known that journeys educate, it is particularly true in our case; everything we have learned from travelling and meeting new people has turned out to be very valuable. We are all very open-minded, always eager to learn new things and visit new places. All these things make us aim for more challenging adventures (more distant and more exotic). We are proud to have friends all over the world from the United States of America, through Ghana and the Cook Islands.

One of our biggest achievements, of which we are very proud of, is the fact that many scouts from foreign countries participate in our camps as a result of all of our journeys. This also allows us to look at our Polish scout movement from a different perspective. We are constantly looking for the new ways of developing ourselves and that is why we appreciate the foreign involvement in our society very much. We learn a lot from others and want to believe that they also can learn from us.

We are very open to Europe and everybody is welcomed to our club. It is worth mentioning that our members are not only from Poland but also from United States of America and Britain.

One of the biggest differences between our club and other clubs is that we keep searching for new places to travel to. Our aim is to find a new please to visit rather than to use one of the old and known scout bases. Scout exchange plans allow us to visit many places on our continent, which is big on the map but small for a scout traveller.

Future....

What will our future will look like?

What are our plans?

There are still many new and interesting places on the map of Poland, Europe and World that we wish to visit.

Dodaj do: