Third Head of Contingent Visit

The third and last Head of Contingent Visit before the jamboree was held last weekend in Malmö. Some 150 scouts from 57 countries attended and about 100 from the Jamboree Planning Team were there as well. The participants received a lot of information and hopefully all feel well prepared and enthusiastic to go home and do the last preparations within their contingents. It was a very good atmosphere at the meeting and we hope that this will continue during the jamboree as well.

It's hard to find a better opportunity to release the jamboree song than on a truly international event as the Head of contingent visit so at 9 pm Saturday night Daniel Lemma and the Jamboree band entered the stage and played the world release of the jamboree song "Changing the world" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te8FbB76jzcbe.com/watch?v=Te8FbB76jzc

Third meeting with the Advisory Board

This weekend the World Scout Jamboree Advisory Board has had its third and final meeting. The Advisory Board is an international group of Scouts with Jamboree experience that give us helpful suggestions and support. Getting input from people who have themselves organized World Scout Jamborees or in other ways taken part in international events is of great help for our Planning Team, as we want to make sure we deliver a truly international experience. At this meeting we received presentations by many different groups in the Planning Team and were very happy to hear about everything from the Faith and Beliefs activities to the Arena Events.

First meeting with the Jamboree Management Team

During the jamboree the Jamboree Executive Team will be reinforced with some more members to be able to have management 24/7 and handle all expected and unexpected issues. This group will be called Jamboree Management Team and last weekend we had our first meeting together. We think it's very important that the new members get some time to get to know the organization, both the structure and the team members. We will meet three times up to the jamboree and the new members will attend the next and last council meeting where all head of departments are gathered.

We are also very happy that we in our new team have members from Singapore, USA and Spain.

At the 39th World Scout Conference

Swedish scouts are right now taking part in the 39th World Scout Conference in Curitiba, Brazil. We will present the 22nd World Scout Jamboree in Sweden for the conference, host an exhibition, answer questions and hopefully have good discussions with the different countries attending the conference.

This time my team is representing the jamboree without me and when I look out of the window and see the snow covered landscape both Brazil

and Swedish summer feels quite far away. But we know that it is less than 200 days left!

My team has told me that there is a great interest for the jamboree at the conference and lots of people visit our exhibition. Yesterday, our Executive Director, Göran Hägerdal, held a presentation in the plenary hall and he announced that we have now raised our prognosis from 30 000 to 34 000 scouts coming to Sweden for the jamboree this summer!!

Grant to Operation One World from BRIO

We want to have a jamboree with as many different countries as possible represented and through our solidarity found Operation One World we will be able to help at least 370 scouts from 90 different countries that cannot themselves afford to go. Both individuals, NSO’s, organizations and companies can contribute to the fund to help even more scouts to attend. Yesterday I had the honor to go to the village Osby and the Swedish toy company BRIO to on behalf of the Swedish Guide and Scout Council receive the BRIO-award for 2010 and a grant of 25 000 SEK to Operation One World. This grant will cover the cost for almost two scouts and we are very grateful and will express our sincere thanks to BRIO and the foundation Lennart Ivarssons stipendiefond.
After the ceremony we enjoyed a fantastic guided tour of BRIO’s Lekoseum and Dag Ivarsson, son of Lennart Ivarsson, showed us old toys which gave us all many memories from childhood.

Council meeting in a winter setting

This weekend (26-28 November) we have had a planning meeting for all the heads of department in the Jamboree Planning Team and the Jamboree Executive Team. This was the eight time this group got together, and as always the atmosphere was great with a lot of constructive discussions and exchange of ideas. The focus of the meeting was the delivery phase of the Jamboree, with staff planning and the organizational structure at the camp. With only 240 days to go until the Jamboree, we are now entering a very busy phase with lots of final planning!

We also welcomed guests from the World Scout Bureau, and took this opportunity to award the Gustav Adolf medal to the Secretary General of WOSM – Mr Luc Panissod. The medal is given to Scouts who have done exceptional work for Swedish Scouting and has been awarded to very few people outside Sweden, and we are happy to say that Mr Panissod is one of these. By awarding him this medal we would like to thank him for his support to Swedish Scouting.

As this was the last time this group got together before Christmas, we also had a small Christmas celebration where we drank the traditional Swedish hot beverage glögg and ate gingerbread cookies. The department heads also made Christmas decorations inspired by their departments. With this the entire Jamboree Planning Team and I would like to wish you a happy holiday season!

Second Advisory Board meeting

Two more hours remain of our second Advisory Board meeting and it has been an intense meeting with a lot of topics on the agenda. But we started the weekend with a great tour out in the archipelago outside of Stockholm. A quite long boat trip took us out to Sandhamn which is one of the islands most far east before you reach the open ocean.

At this meeting the topics have been Execution organization, IST and HR issues, participant food, safety, logistics, program activities, subcamp life, contingent support and Camp in camp.

We have learned a lot about the different areas and we have had very good discussions which have given the different departments good advice and an increased understanding.

We will have one more meeting before the jamboree, February 2011, but I'm sure our members of the Advisory Board will follow our planning along the way and as well beeing our great ambassaders around the world.