Tan Holdings to charter, support Boys Scouts NMI District

From left to right, Argie Buensalido of CTSI Logistics, Kinty Elieisar of D&Q, Melvin Masga of Fiesta Resort Saipan, CNMI Boy Scouts of America district chair Pastor Wayne Gillespie, Frank Cabrera of Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan, and Tan Holdings corporate consultant David M. Sablan Sr. (CATHY CEPEDA)

The Boy Scouts of America CNMI District will be revived after securing a commitment from Tan Holdings to support and charter the organization.

District chair Wayne Gillespie told Saipan Tribune said this new effort to revive the charter will start small to ensure that everything is in place before recruitment of members begins.

“We will do things in proper order and are going to have a trained adult leadership in place and now that we have our unit chartering organization we will be putting the kids in place after,” he said. “I want to thank Tan Holdings and Uncle Dave [Sablan] for their support.”

Tan Holdings corporate consultant Dave M. Sablan Sr. said that three companies within the Tan Holdings organization will be volunteering their leadership.

“From the three organizations we will spread out,” Sablan said.

The three organizations so far comprise four volunteers: Argie Buensalido of CTSI Logistics, Frank Cabrera and Melvin Masga of Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan, and Kinty Elieisar of D&Q.

Gillespie said they have several volunteer positions open at the district level, not just scoutmasters. They need merit badge counselors to be instructors for the training of the scouts and there are now six positions available.

“We welcome women, too. All of our positions are open to women. They can lead Boy Scout troops or take any position in the district. We would like to see more women get involved and would love to see it happen,” Gillespie said.

He described ideal adult leaders as those who have strong characters who love to mentor children, can walk the talk, are honest, have no temper problems, and have patience.

Gillespie noted that each unit would elect a troop leader and they will decide what is the meeting or agenda going to be and that each unit will be involved in community activities.

“We base our scouts on grade range, which will be from 1st to 12th grade,” he said.

Gillespie said that at age 11 there is a transition between Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts.

According to him, the very thing about scouting is that the local unit and the chartering organization have a lot of power on issues that they would want to do.

Gillespie also said that they are not required to wear their uniforms.

“Each unit can choose whether they want to use the official uniform or design one of its own and sometimes you will see Cub Scouts wearing different colored uniforms,” Gillespie said.

There is no set number of scouts under a division. “It depends on what the unit wants to do and how many scouts the adult leadership think they can handle,” he said.

Gillespie noted that the Boy Scouts might be joining this year’s Liberation Day.

He blamed the demise of the old chapter on a wrong strategy. “Everybody had their hearts in the right place and I would like to offer an apology to the district for the things that we did not foresee happening,” Gillespie said.

He said that they had some children who expected to get into scouting but were not able to because the adult leadership did not materialize.

“It was a terrible mistake and we are going back to fix it, by not going in the order we used to but to make sure that we have the sponsoring, chartering, and the organization first,” Gillespie said.