Emma Boon

Emma is an inspiration, she is a keen, enthusiastic and dedicated founder member of our Scout Network group. She is independent and self-motivated as proved by the fact that she earned her Queen's Scout Award with little or no help from anyone else. She enjoys helping others and in a bid to help other people have the scouting experiences she had, has been a Young Leader with Beavers in Hertfordshire since she was 14. At university she wasted no time in finding a needy group to work with and is now a Beaver leader in a relatively deprived area of Leeds, working with varied ethnicities and backgrounds. She has personally helped several children with behavioural and social problems to ensure they can still access and benefit from scouting. When still at school, though busy with A level studies, Emma fundraised and undertook a trip to Ghana with her Explorer Unit where, using the funds they had raised and labour provided by themselves, they built a community centre for the Ghanaian scouts. They had no building background or experience simply a 'can do' attitude. In their 'spare' time they worked in orphanages and schools installing computers discarded by British companies, so young Ghanaians could acquire the IT skills they need to qualify for a secondary school place. So successful was this venture that the local township has asked the scouts of our district to go back again this year to equip a mother's room at the local hospital and refurbish a school for the deaf.