The Moot

So you might be sat here, thinking to yourself "sure Jon, I see that you are going to go and travel around and meet Scouts and learn about how Scouting in America works, but what's this Moot thing you keep mentioning?"

Well, dear reader, I am glad that you asked that question, because it's something I've been meaning to explain for a while! The Moot is basically a jamboree for 18-25 year-olds; or, as they are known in Scouting, Rovers.

Ok, so for those of you who don't know what a jamboree is, let's back up another step. A jamboree is a large gathering of Scouts from all over the world, at which scouts meet other scouts from all over the world, share their cultures, get involved with a whole host of activities, and generally have a good time for two weeks. The first one was held in 1920, in the UK, and since then they have been held all over the world; in 2011 the jamboree was in Sweden, and in 2003 it was in Thailand! It's also been to Greece, Australia, Norway, and a bunch of other cool places.




It's only a matter of time

Jamborees are generally only held once every four years, and by now I think we can all agree that they are pretty cool things (they will eventually be on the MOON, for goodness' sake!) "But why," I hear you ask, "do you need a separate one for the 18-25's? Can't they all go on the big jumbowatsit or whatever you call it?" Well, as World Scout Jamborees are only open to 14-17 year-olds as participants, the over 18's in Scouting only ever go to the events as leaders and so spend a fair amount of time looking after their charges. But if you ask any 18-25 year old if they would like to have a go on the bouncy castle, or at the climbing wall, you are likely to get this response:

 

That look that says "nothing will ever be this awesome again"

So that's the main reason, I guess; even though Scouting is a youth movement, and the adults in the movement should primarily be working to help those kids have as good a time as possible (as I've written about in my pesonal blog), there is a time when we need to be allowed to let our hair down, forget about the kids, and have a go at the activities ourselves! And that is a big part of what the Moot is all about, as up to 5,000 of us come together to meet, laugh and take part in activities

Fully half of the Moot is spent just doing activities on the main campsite, in a place called Awacamej Mino (which means "best of the best" in the local native dialect). Those activities range from simple thing like Volleyball, to kayaking, to hiking, to crafts, and all things in between. We do those activities in our international patrols; groups of 6-8 people, all from different countries, who will be introduced to each other online before the Moot and will have to cook, sleep, eat, work and play together for the entirety of the Moot! I'll no doubt tell you more about who they are when I find out who they are!

The other half of the Moot is spent in one of three cities; Montreal, Quebec or Toronto. Before the Moot, everyone has to choose a 'path'. The precise meaning of these paths seems to have been left deliberately vague, but I already know that of the "ecoresponsible", "life", "culture" and "adventure" paths, there is only one that I want to do - adventure!

Sorry little fella, but eco-responsibility will just have to wait for now!

The paths involve some manner of community outreach project, again left vague for now but no doubt soon to be expanded upon, and again - you'll know all about it here! You can also check out the actual Moot site at www.mootcanada2013.ca/en/, and of course they are on Facebook too.

So that's what I'm finishing the trip on! Keep reading the blog, follow me on Twitter (there's a button on the right hand side of the blog now!) and you can always befriend me on Facebook too!

The flights are booked!

Finally! This project is off the ground!

So I am flying out to Cancun on the 1st May, and home from Halifax in Canada on the 22nd; dateseekers among you will be keen to know that I will arrive in on the evening of the 23rd, which means that if I get a good night's sleep I should be able to enjoy my first day back in blighty by celebrating my birthday! Be sure to have your party hats ready, everyone.

My party hat

Better yet, I managed to get those flights sorted for under £1,000. I managed this through www.skyscanner.com, a website which is a bit like confused.com crossed with the national rail website, but with planes instead of trains. You can make your search incredibly broad; I searched for flights from the UK to Mexico, any time in May; Skyscanner pulled all the flights together and found me the cheapest ones at £406, all in. Not bad, ey?! Not all the flights are refundable, and sometimes you can actually find cheaper deals by going to the websites that advertise on Skyscanner (so don't ignore them!) but by and large I think it's going to become my primary method of searching for flights from now on.

My original method of trying to shout one down out of the sky wasn't great, to be fair

Fundraising efforts are continuing as well... well I have completed two grant applications, one of which is pending the district commissioner signing it, and the other of which could be construe as sliiiiightly tenuous - the The Spoore Merry & Rixman Foundation does wonderful work providing funds for educational purposes for people in the Maidenhead & Bray, including helping with tuition funds and uniform costs. Now while I am not trying to get my student loan paid off, and I already have a Scout Uniform, I am hoping that the educational value that this blog will have if people read it, and the things that you and I can learn about scouting in other countries and about other cultures in general as I wander the world and see what it has to offer, will let me qualify for a little bit of financial assistance.

And that brings me a point I made in my first post. This adventure is only going to be half achieved if nobody reads this blog, it's going to be even less of a success if nobody gives me any neckerchieves to swap! By the way, do we think it's neckerchieves or neckerchiefs? The spellcheck thinks the later, but bearing in mind that it doesn't register the word blog I won't be taking its opinion to heart any time soon! Anyway, bottom line is that to get my adventure off the ground, I need people to spread the word about what I'm doing. Even if you don't know anyone in Scouting, chances are that someone you know will. Heck, they might even know two of them. So when you are sat in the pub, telling them about that chap who's planning on Scouting his way round the Americas, watch for someone who sits up and goes "Scouts?". Chances are they will know someone! Or be someone! Well of course everyone is someone, but you know what I mean.
I will be trying to get one of the national papers to take an interest in my story over the next week, and even talking to local radio and TV to see how much airtime my pretty face can grab in the name of Scouting.

But if that face up there tells you anything, it's that my efforts alone won't make this happen. It's going to take you wonderful people talking to everyone you know, telling them about the man with the radio-face who's going on a journey to meet everyone he can and give them all neckerchieves. Can you do that for me?

Good. Knew I could count on you :)

Plans and schemes

Hi everyone,

So after an initial burst of activity, I have to admit that the plans for my phenomenal trans-continental adventure have taken a bit of a dive. Here's my list of things I need to do:

• Get a massive map and a pinboard to plan my route
• Book flights to Mexico
• Book flights home from Canada
• Talk to the International team at Scout HQ to work out how on earth to get in touch with US and Mexican Scouts
• Badger Scouting Magazine into getting back in touch with me
• Decide whether or not to take my campfire blanket with me
• Try to learn Spanish
• Try and organise some fundraising/grant applications

The good news is that I have indeed decided that the campfire blanket will come with me. The bad news is that EVERYTHING ELSE on that list needs doing still! I don't even really have a good excuse, having had much more free time this week than I expected! To make matters worse, the one offer I have had of a neckerchief so far, I have managed to completely ignore. So, Richard Shepherd of Somerset Network, the offer of a neckerchief is very kind - but do Somerset Network want an international connection? That is, after all, the point of the necker swapping exercise (it's already been established that I would never have room to hang all the neckers in my bedroom, and living at home still it's a bit difficult to justify filling my parents' kitchen with Mexican neckerchieves). If they do, then by all means send a necker on over with some contact details!

See? I AM on the case! Never fear, people of the Internet, for I will update here again when I have progressed further with my plans but in the meantime... if you are a resident of Maidenhead, Cookham, or anywhere that the Maidenhead Advertiser is sold, you can treat yourself today by buying a copy and seeing my beautiful (according to my Granny, who is an expert on these things) face with a little piece they've done, including a link to this blog! The start of what could (and arguably should) be a worldwide media storm surrounding this trip!

P.S. If this is the first time reading this blog, then you may want to have a quick read of the previous post, in which I explain what on earth is going on, why I need to learn Spanish, and more!

Bye for now!

Humble beginnings...

Hello and welcome to this, the first post of possible the most exciting Scout-related blog you will ever read... Get a Woggle On! Now if you're here on day one, then most likely you have been pointed here by me shouting loudly at you over the Internet, but it is my hope that as the adventure I am planning gets more planned and actually happens, more people will follow what's going on and share in my big adventure!

It'll be like that bit in Finding Nemo where everyone's telling the story of Nemo, only with less water and more Internet (image found at www.rottentomatoes.com)

But what, I hear you ask, is the big adventure? Who, I hear some of you ask, are you? Why, I am sure all of you are secretly wondering, am I such a fan of rhetorical questions?!

Well here's the thing. I am going to the World Scout Moot in Canada this year with the rest of the UK contingent. Well, I was going with the rest of the UK contingent until I decided that, with a job coming to a close and some money being saved up, I would go and indulge in a spot of travelling before I had to sit down and deal with the real world. The plan is go to Mexico in May, and work my way up through Mexico and the USA, seeing family, friends and occasinally couch surfing, until I joined the contingent in Toronto on 6th August and the Moot kicked off.

All well and good, I thought, but what on earth am I going to do in those three months? What was I going to see? I needed an objective. And then, as I lay awake in the early hours of the morning in a friend's house in London one weekend, it hit me. The UK readers of this blog, I would wager, do not know as much about BSA - the Boy Scouts of America - as they would like to. And I would also wager that they don't know nearly as much about how Scouting works in Mexico. And here I am, a Scout Leader who loves to write, planning on travelling round both those places! The opportunity is too good to pass up.

But wait! The idea gets even better!

BUT HOW COULD IT GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT?!

In my experience as a Scout, both as a leader and working at the International Scout Centre in Switzerland, I have seen that international experiences and friends open up a amazing new side to Scouting that, sadly, can often be quite hard to get into without contacts in foreign countries. So, I thought, what better way of doing something about that than putting people in touch with Scout groups in Mexico and in the USA, and then from all over the world at the Moot as I travel? As plans go, I feel comfortable in saying that it is pretty much one of the best ideas I have ever had since I decided to put the hood up on my graduation gown when I finished university.

No regrets

So here's my plan: any Scout group in the UK who fancies making contact with a foreign troop- most likely from the US or Mexico but potentially from anywhere in the world!- send me a group neckerchief, a woggle, some contact details, and maybe a small donation to help me get around the place when I'm out there if you feel you can. I will collect all these up and take them with me when I leave, and as I wander around the Americas I will meet as many Scout groups as I can. When there, I will swap the neckerchieves I have for theirs, along with the contact details, and when I return I will send all the swapped details and neckerchieves back to their new recipients. And just like that, now connections will be forged, new friendships made, and new experiences opened up for as many young people (and not so young people) as I can manage!

Of course I will keep this blog going as I travel, detailing who I meet, what I learn, and hopefully it will be an interesting and entertaining read for everyone back home. Now obviously, at the minute not many people know about this plan; in fact, I am pretty sure that you are the first person to read this, so you should take upon yourself to tell as many Scout Groups as  you can about my adventure, and if they want to be a part of it then just point them in the direction of this blog! I am talking to the wonderful people at Scouting Magazine about getting their support for this endeavour, so watch out for me between the covers of that glossy compendium of scoutiness too! I'll post again next week, when I begin to plan the route that this journey will take me...

Ciao!