In August 2000 Three people, two Uganda Scout leaders and one British, were surveying the land that had been allocated to the Soroti scouts when it was mentioned that no district in Uganda had their own district badge.The question was; What, if it were possible to have their own badge, would they want on it to represent the Soroti district?
The three leaders crouched down and started to draw a rough badge in the red dust with a stick. "We would like to represent the tree planting that will be so important to us" they said. " We would also wish to represent the fact that we would like Soroti to be the 'spearhead' of Scouting in Uganda."
The UK leader tore a piece of paper from his notebook and copied the rough drawing from the one drawn in the dust. This is the drawing you see above. The tribe in the region are the Teso, so a Teso spear is shown. The spear went horizontal after finding out that they would wear the badge on their right shoulder. The spear would now always point forward to show Scouts don't sit and laze; - they go forward and achieve things
The three eucalyptus trees represent a national scheme where the Scouts are sponsored by a commercial firm who provides tree samplings. The Scouts plant these in the wet areas as the trees drain the marsh ready for cultivation. Within two years the trees have grown enough to cut and sell as timber for rafters and scaffolding poles. The oil from the leaves is also processed. All the income goes to the Scouts who plant more trees and start again. Soroti was the first region to take part in this project when 3,000 saplings provided by Shell were planted in the year 2000. The colours of yellow, black and red are taken from the flag colours of the Ugandan national badge. The green, yellow, black and red shown on the badge are also the Pan-African colours.
The sale of these badges in the UK have enabled us to not only send 500 to Soroti but there is also enough money to buy more when needed.
The design was changed slightly in October 2004 to incorporate the Scout arrow.
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