Annual Report 2010

Nurturing Kinship!

In August 2011, over thirty thousand Scouts from 161 countries will meet at the World Jamboree in Sweden. Our Annual Report this year examines the role of these camps in the modern era. 

Many Scouting activities have a profound influence on people in their formative years. Yet one of the most significant of these must be when a Scout leaves the certainty of his or her community for the first time and is confronted, in an unfamiliar place - a small inter-group camp, or a big world jamboree - by strangers with different ethos, values, principles, languages and beliefs. 
 
The international Scout experience is not, as some may imagine, a random youth tourist outing. It is a well-planned and well organized dialogue between cultures, facilitated by skilled, trained, leaders. Maybe for the first time, a Scout discovers that their small local group is one of a million such groups in a vast global network. His small community service, added together with the others he discovers, truly change the world. His fellow Scouts, may be from different corners of the world, are actually “Just like me”. It all makes sense now!