Building on the previous trainings, the sixth Interamerican Leadership Training (ILT6) was a huge success!

ILT's vision is to "strengthen Scouting in the Interamerican Region (IAR) and its National Scout Organizations (NSO)" and was started in 2013 as a program where all 34 countries of the Interamerican Region were invited to learn leadership skills to better their home groups and their NSO as a whole. The program has come a very far way since then, unifying the IAR and expanding outside of the Region this year, to include a total of 36 countries including participants from Hong Kong and Iceland. The ILT curriculum has evolved with the program, to include important topics such as:

• Vision, goals, and planning

• Conflict resolution

• Ethical leadership

• Stages of team development

• Diversity and inclusion

• Emotional intelligence

• Leading virtual teams

• The UN's Sustainable Development Goals

• Many WOSM resources, such as the Scout Donation Platform, its governance strategy, and the Better World Framework.

An incredible team of youth staff, who were guided by adults, planned and prepared the ILT program. Participants formed International teams that were mentored by a youth staff member throughout the week, as they grew as a team through the stages of team development. The International teams had a chance to practice leadership skills learned at ILT and put them into action. Throughout the week, teams developed Messengers of Peace projects to take back to their local National Scout Organizations in order to better the world around them. This year we had many projects ranging from decreasing inequalities, creating educational tools and reducing the human impact on land.

This year’s Senior Team Leader was Siddeeq Shakoor from Trinidad and Tobago who led the youth staff members in the months prior, preparing the final details for ILT. Adults who staffed this course focused on mentoring and guiding youth leaders and enabling them in order for the team to succeed.

We asked some of the staff members about what impact The Interamerican Leadership Training had on their lives.

Flor From Argentina wrote:

“I'm Maria Florencia Cagliero from Argentina, and I'm 20 years old.  I LOVE the impact ILT has had over my life, not only my personal one, but also my scouting life. ILT is a life changing experience, where you get to meet a new family over 7 days, and not only you learn new things and learn how to develop new skills, but you can also empower yourself with the help of a lot of scouting friends. The Interamerican Leadership Training is a mixture of feelings, tools, skills, songs, games, learning, listening, caring, enjoying, trying new things, living with many other cultures, joy, and sad tears when ILT finally comes to an end. I could keep listing, but the idea is that with these few words, you can get my feeling about the impact ILT has. The impact I'm talking about is not only to participants and staff members. It is also to every scout part of a NSO participating in ILT, every scout that somehow gets to learn some ILT skills because of a friend that went to ILT, someone who attends to a New Course, or even your personal family where you can also apply and teach them everything you have learned in the past 7 days, maybe about leadership, about another's country culture, or maybe just about telling them your dream”.

Joaquin from Uruguay who was in charge of program said:

“ILT has added a lot of value to my life. Not only the "technical" things learned this years by being a participant and staffer, but also on how it changed my way of seeing life, culture and even the ways of relating with people; all of those, have helped me to be who I am today. ILT has showed me how scouting can really apply to daily life on every single aspect; and that creating a better world should be something that we do every single day, no matter where or with who we are”.

Nathan From Canada who was a Team Advisor wrote:

“ILT 6 has been an experience of a lifetime. As a staff member, specifically a Team Advisor, I have had the opportunity to both learn from the experience but at the same time give back to the region.  This training event was much more than just training, it was a chance to expand my network and learn new things. I was a participant in ILT 5, but that experience is very different from this experience since I got to actually help other youths from other countries learn about WOSM’s Better World Framework but also witness the magic of International Scouting. While at ILT 6, I furthered my public speaking skills, my creative writing and most of all my ability to develop a program. It was an experience that I will never forget as I plan to continue to use all the knowledge and ideas that ILT 6 gave me to help develop Canada’s International Program. As the Program Lead on the International Program Team for Scouts Canada, I was able to test ideas as well as develop the program that Canada is looking to run by talking with youth and other staff members to see what they did in their own NSOs during ILT. I can state with confidence that Sixth Interamerican Leadership Training has not only allowed me to improve myself, but it also allowed me International Friendships that I will remember for years to come”.

The seventh Interamerican Leadership Training will be in Panama in 2019.