World Scout Jamboree 2007

Welcome to the first posting from the Jamboree itself, on the day the first Scouts and Guides arrive. Most of the adults in the International Service Team (IST) arrived 2 days ago, and are here to make the event an unforgettable experience for 40,000 Scouts, Guides and their contingent leaders from all over the world.

Some of the IST arrived last Friday, but for most, Tuesday was the day to get set up and start training for the roles they’ll be doing for the next two weeks. Although not suffering the way some parts of the UK have recently, Chelmsford has had a fair share of rain, and many areas of the site are already covered with mud, although the Site Operations team are working their hardest to get bark chippings down in the worst affected areas.

Building of the site continues right through the day, then at night time, there are delivery lorries for the restaurant areas in each of the 16 sub camp areas for the participants, the massive two restaurants for the IST, as well as the local Sainsbury’s stores positioned around the site.

This is the first time in the 100 years of Scouting that an international jamboree has had attendance from every single country where there’s a scouting presence, representing the 28 million Scouts worldwide.

The Jamboree Build Team (JBT) started weeks ago, as soon as they were given the keys to Hylands Park in Chelmsford, usually a quiet country park location, but now transformed into a global village, with a population bigger than the town of Llanelli in Wales.

Over 4,600 Scouts & Guides from all across the United Kingdom have been arriving today, so that they are ready, as the host nation, to welcome over 30,000 participants from across the world tomorrow, ahead of the opening ceremony on Saturday.

Watch this space…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 7:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.