Kon’nichiwa! I’m Butch, and I attended the 23rd World Scout Jamboree in Japan as part of the Golddiggers Unit. It was an amazing experience and you’ve heard loads of other people tell you about their life changing moments.
Can you really put a price on that? Yeah, you can. It’s about three and a half grand. Bumph! Jaw-dropping moment, I know.
But actually, my role before we got to the Jamboree was to support the Unit in raising money to help pay for that.
We raised £73,000 in advance – roughly £1,800 each, some people in fact raised every single penny to pay for their trip and experience. It is affordable if you put the effort in, as a Unit we came together. It was an 18 month experience as opposed to a 3 week experience for us. We worked together, shared success, went on different camps, and raised loads and loads of money along the way.
How did we do it? We car-booted, we bag-packed, we wrote to people, we bramble-picked, we baby-sat – you name it, it happened, but it really does work.
So I’m here to say it is affordable, to all – you just have to put that effort in.
Jim Butcher, Deputy Unit Leader, Golddiggers, 23rd World Scout Jamboree
Butch is just one of 31 voices who’ve put their support behind a daily countdown to the closing date for applications. Those who appeared have either been to a Jamboree themselves as a participant or Leader, are the parents of someone who attended, missed out on the opportunity, or are Santa. You can see the countdown on all our social media accounts.
