Princess of Wales ‘looking forward’ to working with new Chief Scout
The Princess of Wales has published a rare personal tweet, revealing that she is “looking forward” to working with Dwayne Fields, the new Chief Scout.
The Princess, who is joint president of the Scout Association, wroted: “Delighted to welcome @DwayneFields as the new UK Chief Scout. The Scouts is such an incredible organisation, teaching #SkillsForLife and making a huge difference to young people across the country. Looking forward to working with you! C.”
Mr Fields, the first black Briton to reach the North Pole, was confirmed as the successor to Bear Grylls as Chief Scout on Thursday. Born in Jamaica, he came to the UK at the age of six and was raised in inner city London, with little access to nature.
He said of his appointment: “It’s absolutely a sense of honour – initially disbelief, followed by a huge sense of pride in something that’s made a huge difference to my life. I remember being seven years old and walking into that Cub Scouts hut in Palmers Green, in north London, and I never thought I belonged anywhere until the moment I walked into that hut.
“And now to be given this role as Chief Scout, to me it’s pride of place, really. It’s the fact that other young people can look at me and say, ‘Well, actually, that guy started exactly where I am’.”
Mr Fields survived a stabbing and attempted shooting while growing up in London and acknowledged that it would have been easy to fall on the wrong side of the tracks.
He said: “In terms of my self-confidence, my self-belief, sometimes we look at it and call them soft skills, empathy and patience, and understanding and communications skills – all these things played a part in me making the right decisions at the right time, and arguably I learned those and developed those in scouting.”
The Princess remains out of the public eye as she continues her chemotherapy treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer. In a personal statement released in June, she said she had “good days and bad days” but was “not out of the woods yet”.
She went on to join the Royal family for Trooping the Colour and was last seen in public at Wimbledon in July, when she watched the men’s singles final alongside her daughter, Princess Charlotte, before presenting the trophy to Carlos Alcaraz.
The Princess, who was a Brownie in her youth, was named joint president of the Scout Association in September 2020.
She shares the position, her first presidency of an organisation, with the Queen’s cousin, the Duke of Kent, who has been president since 1975.
The Princess has enjoyed a long association with the organisation and has spoken of the “key role” it plays as children build relationships and develop the skills they need to succeed in later life.
The Souting movement, formed by Sir Robert Baden-Powell in 1907, has a membership of some 500,000 young people and adult volunteers across the country.
More recently, it was chosen to mark Prince Louis’s first official public engagement, when the Wales family joined the 3rd Upton Scouts at their hut in Slough, Berkshire, last May, for the Big Help Out, a national day of volunteering.
As has become tradition, the young Prince stole the show, clambering aboard a digger, firing off some arrows and scoffing as many toasted marshmallows as he could get his hands on.
