Buckle up. This is an essay, rather than a short read…

The Scarf

Every year on 1 August I open a drawer containing rather more Scout scarves than any sensible person ought to own and spend a few moments deciding which one to wear. It is never quite as straightforward a decision as it sounds. There are scarves from different appointments and different stages of my life; scarves from World Scout Jamborees and international conferences; scarves presented by friends from other countries; scarves that evoke particular camps, memorable journeys or responsibilities that, at the time, felt impossibly daunting. Each has acquired its own story and its own associations, so choosing one inevitably means revisiting a particular chapter of my life. The day itself is unlikely to begin in any especially ceremonial fashion—more often than not I shall first be woken by an impatient cat reminding me that breakfast is overdue—but, at some point, I shall tie on a Scout scarf and get on with whatever the day has in store.

Occasionally somebody notices. They ask why a grown man is wearing a Scout scarf while buying groceries, meeting friends for coffee or going about an otherwise ordinary Saturday. I explain that it is World Scout Scarf Day, when Scouts and former Scouts around the world wear their scarves as a quiet celebration of a movement that has shaped their lives. It is a wonderfully understated tradition. At any given moment, someone in Oxford, Nairobi, Warsaw, Tokyo, Santiago or Sydney will almost certainly be doing exactly the same thing. We may never meet. We may not speak the same language or share the same culture. Yet we recognise one another all the same, because behind every scarf lies the same simple Promise, interpreted in different ways but rooted in remarkably similar values.

That explanation is perfectly true, but it is not the whole truth.

The real reason I still wear a Scout scarf after more than fifty years is that it reminds me not simply of where I have been, but of who I have become. It is extraordinary that a simple triangle of cloth should carry so much meaning, yet that is precisely what happens. Most uniforms belong to a particular season of life. School blazers are packed away, university scarves become souvenirs and even ceremonial robes spend most of their existence hanging in wardrobes. Scout scarves are different. Rather than fading into memory, they seem to gather significance with the passing years. They become repositories of experience, each one carrying the friendships, responsibilities and moments that have shaped the person who wore it.

When I look at those scarves, I do not simply remember camps or hikes. I remember friendships that have endured for decades and others that sprang into life around a campfire on the other side of the world. I remember laughter that seemed to echo across valleys, songs that should probably never have been written but somehow remain unforgettable, damp tents, muddy boots, glorious sunsets, impossible optimism and conversations beneath canvas that solved all the world’s problems before bedtime. I remember moments of success that felt exhilarating at the time and moments of failure that, with hindsight, proved far more valuable. Above all, I remember people. Scouting has introduced me to some of the finest human beings I have ever known, many of whom would never dream of describing themselves as remarkable, yet whose quiet commitment to serving others has changed countless lives.

The scarves also remind me of a life that, as a boy growing up in Gloucestershire, I could never have imagined. Through Scouting I have travelled to countries that were little more than names in an atlas when I first joined the Movement. I have worked alongside people from cultures, faiths and traditions very different from my own, discovering time and again that shared values matter infinitely more than national boundaries. I have stood in places of extraordinary wealth and in communities where poverty was immediate, humbling and impossible to ignore. I have watched young people overcome circumstances that might easily have defined them and instead discover talents, confidence and ambitions they scarcely believed they possessed. Time and again I have been reminded that ability is spread remarkably evenly across humanity, while opportunity most certainly is not. If Scouting has taught me anything about the world, it is that our responsibility is not simply to admire talent but to help create the conditions in which it can flourish.

Looking back now, I realise that Scouting did far more than broaden my horizons. It transformed the way I understood leadership, service and community long before I encountered those words in any professional context. It taught me that leadership is something exercised for others rather than over them; that trust is almost always more effective than control; that responsibility is best learnt by being given it; and that optimism is not naïve but necessary if we are to leave the world better than we found it. Those ideas have shaped every significant leadership role I have held, although I scarcely recognised their origins until many years later. Like so many young people, I joined because it looked like fun. I wanted adventures, campfires and weekends away with friends. Had anyone suggested that I was taking my first steps into a movement that would shape my values, explain my career and introduce me to lifelong friends across the globe, I would have thought them faintly ridiculous.

The older I become, the more convinced I am that the most important influences on our lives rarely announce themselves at the time. We recognise them only in retrospect, when we look backwards and discover a thread running quietly through everything that followed. For me, that thread has always been Scouting. It has connected childhood to adulthood, local service to international responsibility, personal friendships to lifelong vocation. It has opened doors I never knew existed and introduced me to opportunities that no amount of careful career planning could ever have anticipated. Above all, it has provided a set of values that have remained remarkably constant while almost everything else around them has changed.

That is why I still wear a Scout scarf every 1 August. It is not an exercise in nostalgia, nor a sentimental attempt to recapture childhood. It is a quiet act of gratitude for a movement that has given me adventures beyond my imagination, friendships beyond my deserving and opportunities beyond anything that young boy could possibly have dreamt of. Before I tell the story of where that journey led, it seems only right to acknowledge the simple truth that lies behind every page that follows: I have been extraordinarily fortunate, and much of that good fortune began the day I first tied a Scout scarf around my neck.

A Wet Tent and an Open Door

Every journey has a beginning, although we rarely recognise it at the time. Mine began not with a grand adventure or an inspiring speech, but in a rather damp tent on a campsite at Cranham, near Stroud. It was my first Scout camp, and the weather was determined to make an impression. During the night the rain found every weakness in the tent, and I woke to discover that my sleeping bag, my clothes and just about everything else had absorbed more water than seemed remotely desirable. I remember wondering whether camping was really supposed to be like this. Looking back now, it makes me smile that one of the defining relationships of my life should have begun in circumstances that were, by any objective measure, distinctly uncomfortable.

The remarkable thing, however, is that the discomfort is not what stayed with me. What I remember is the excitement of being away with friends, the satisfaction of working together to overcome small problems, the freedom of living outdoors and the curious sense that, despite the rain, there was nowhere else I would rather have been. There is a lesson in that which has remained with me ever since. Scouting has never promised comfort. It has promised adventure, and the two are by no means the same thing. Indeed, some of the most valuable experiences we ever have are those that ask something of us in return. A wet camp teaches resilience far more effectively than a dry one, just as a difficult expedition leaves a deeper impression than an easy walk in the sunshine.

Those early years were spent in the St Lawrence Troop in Stroud, and then later at the Scout Troop at Wycliffe College, where Scouting was woven naturally into the rhythm of school life. At the time, I took that entirely for granted. Only much later did I appreciate what an extraordinary education it provided. We learnt practical skills, of course, but that was never really the point. We were learning to rely upon one another, to take responsibility, to solve problems and to discover that leadership was not a badge worn on a sleeve but something demonstrated through actions. Patrol Leaders were expected to lead because that was simply how the troop functioned. Older Scouts looked after younger ones. If a meal needed cooking, someone cooked it. If a route needed planning, someone planned it. If something went wrong, as it inevitably did from time to time, we worked out together how to put it right.

It strikes me now that nobody ever attempted to teach us leadership in the way organisations often try to teach it today. There were no seminars on emotional intelligence, no workshops on communication, no carefully designed competency frameworks. Instead, Scouting did something far more effective. It created situations in which leadership became necessary and then trusted young people to discover, sometimes by succeeding and sometimes by failing, how to exercise it well. We learnt responsibility because responsibility was given to us. We learnt resilience because things occasionally went wrong. We learnt teamwork because there was simply no alternative if the job was to be done.

Looking back across a lifetime in leadership, I have often reflected that many of the qualities people later described as strengths were first developed during those years without my ever noticing. The ability to remain calm when plans unravel, to trust others with genuine responsibility, to recognise that the quietest person in the room often has something important to contribute, to understand that success belongs to the team while responsibility ultimately rests with the leader—none of these ideas arrived through management courses or executive coaching. Their origins lie much earlier, somewhere between muddy campsites, patrol meetings and evenings spent around campfires.

At the time, however, I was simply a Scout enjoying Scouting. Like most young people, I was not analysing the educational philosophy of the Movement or contemplating its influence on my future career. I was thinking about the next camp, the next competition or the next adventure. That, I have come to believe, is one of Scouting’s greatest strengths. It rarely announces the significance of what it is doing. Instead, it quietly plants seeds whose importance becomes apparent only years later. The confidence to volunteer, the willingness to shoulder responsibility, the instinct to help rather than to stand back, the belief that difficulties are there to be overcome rather than avoided—these things grow almost unnoticed until one day you realise they have become part of who you are.

Had my involvement with Scouting ended when I left school, I would still have regarded it as one of the happiest and most formative parts of my childhood. Like so many former Scouts, I might occasionally have smiled at the memory of a wet tent or an impossible campfire song and wondered whatever became of old friends. Instead, something rather different happened. I went to university imagining that Scouting would remain a treasured memory, only to discover that it was about to become something much more significant. Without ever making a conscious decision, I was about to move from being a beneficiary of the Movement to becoming one of its volunteers. Looking back now, I can see that this was the point at which Scouting ceased to be simply an activity I enjoyed and began to become a vocation that would shape the rest of my life.

From Receiving to Giving

When I arrived at the University of Bristol, I assumed that Scouting had probably played its part in my life. Like so many things we enjoy as children, I imagined it would become a happy memory while new interests, new friendships and new opportunities took its place. University was, after all, supposed to be about discovering who you were and beginning the transition into adult life. I could not possibly have guessed that Scouting was about to become not a memory, but the defining thread running through everything that followed.

The catalyst was remarkably simple. As part of the service section of my Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, I began helping with the 160th Bristol Cub Pack. It was not intended to be the beginning of a lifetime of adult leadership; it was simply an opportunity to complete an Award while giving something back to a movement that had already given me so much. Yet it did not take long to realise that I was enjoying this new role every bit as much as I had enjoyed being a young person in Scouting myself. There was a quiet satisfaction in watching Cubs master a skill they had previously found impossible, or seeing a child arrive nervous and uncertain before gradually discovering confidence among friends. Somewhere during those months I crossed a line that I scarcely recognised at the time. Scouting stopped being something I received and became something I wanted to give.

Looking back, I think this is one of the most profound transitions the Movement offers. Every volunteer remembers the leaders who gave up evenings and weekends on their behalf, but there comes a point when you realise that it is now your turn. There is no ceremony to mark the occasion and no badge to commemorate it. One day you simply discover that you have become one of the adults who unlocks the hall, organises the programme, reassures anxious parents, comforts a homesick Cub on camp and quietly accepts that your own enjoyment comes from watching others flourish. It is an extraordinary shift in perspective, and one that has shaped my understanding of leadership ever since. The greatest satisfaction rarely comes from what we achieve ourselves. More often, it comes from helping somebody else discover what they are capable of.

During my second and third years at university, that lesson became still more powerful. I became involved in work with children from the St Paul’s and Easton areas of Bristol, after accepting the invitation to become the Cub Scout Leader, Akela, at the 226th Bristol, just off Old Market Street. They were bright, energetic, funny young people whose lives had already been shaped, for better or worse, by circumstances entirely beyond their control. Long before phrases such as social mobility entered the political vocabulary, I was beginning to understand what unequal opportunity looked like in practice. It is impossible to spend time with children like these without recognising how profoundly experience influences aspiration. We often assume that ambition grows naturally. In reality, it frequently grows only when someone opens a door that a young person did not previously know existed.

One particular camp has remained with me for more than forty years. We took the group to Minchinhampton, only a few miles from Bristol but, in many respects, a world away from the streets they knew. Among them was a young lad called Jake. During a walk on Minchinhampton Common, he suddenly stopped and stared intently. We eventually realised that he had never seen a real cow before. Cows belonged in books, on television or perhaps on the side of a milk bottle, but they had never formed part of his lived experience. The following morning he refused to pour milk onto his cornflakes because, having met the animal itself, he could no longer reconcile the contents of his cereal bowl with the large, inquisitive creatures he had encountered the previous afternoon.

We all laughed, as indeed we should have done, and Jake eventually decided that cornflakes without milk were probably a greater hardship than the alternative. Yet I have never forgotten that moment because it revealed something profoundly important in the gentlest possible way. It reminded me that horizons are not fixed by intelligence or potential; they are shaped by experience. A camping trip only a short drive from home had expanded one young boy’s understanding of the world. That may sound like a very small thing, but I have come to believe that Scouting changes lives through the accumulation of precisely such moments. Sometimes it broadens horizons by taking young people to another country or another continent. Sometimes it does so by introducing them to a field of cows. The principle is exactly the same. Every new experience quietly enlarges a child’s sense of what the world contains and, perhaps more importantly, where they themselves might one day belong within it.

Those years in Bristol changed me every bit as much as they changed the young people with whom I worked. They taught me that service is not an interruption to life but one of the ways in which life acquires meaning. They showed me that leadership is fundamentally an act of encouragement: creating the conditions in which other people discover confidence, resilience and purpose for themselves. Looking back, I can see that almost every role I have held since has been built upon that same foundation. Whether working in education, international development, civic life or the voluntary sector, I have always been trying, in one form or another, to widen horizons and create opportunities for others.

At the time, however, I was simply a young Scout leader enjoying Friday evenings, weekend camps and the company of children whose curiosity about the world continually reminded me to look at it afresh. I had no idea that Scouting was quietly preparing me for responsibilities that lay far beyond Bristol. Nor could I have guessed that the next chapter would open a door onto an international movement that would quite literally change the way I saw the world.

Oxford, Opportunity and a Much Bigger World

After university I moved to Oxford to train as a teacher at Westminster College. Like so many young graduates, I imagined it would be the next step in my career rather than the place where I would spend much of my adult life. Had anyone suggested then that I would one day serve the county as High Sheriff, become a Deputy Lieutenant, chair one of its leading youth charities and come to think of Oxfordshire as home, I would have regarded the idea as fanciful. Yet, once again, it was Scouting that quietly laid the foundations long before I appreciated where they might lead.

I became a leader with St Michael’s Cub Pack, just off the Botley Road and now sadly no longer in existence. There was nothing especially unusual about that. Thousands of young adults become Scout leaders every year, and most do so without any thought that it might lead anywhere beyond the next pack meeting or summer camp. Yet that single year in Oxford gave me something that has proved invaluable throughout my life: a deep affection for the county and an understanding that communities are built not by grand gestures but by people who simply keep turning up. Week after week I found myself alongside volunteers whose names will never appear in history books but whose influence on generations of young people has been immeasurable. The older I become, the more convinced I am that Scouting’s greatest strength has never been its famous members, but its ordinary volunteers. They unlock halls on cold winter evenings, organise camps, complete risk assessments, wash up after barbecues, mend tents, reassure anxious parents and somehow still find the energy to inspire young people week after week. They are among the finest examples of servant leadership I have ever encountered.

I was also brought an opportunity that marked the beginning of my national involvement in Scouting. I was selected to join the Scout Association’s delegation to the British Youth Council. Looking back, I suspect I had little idea of quite how significant that appointment would prove to be. For the first time I found myself representing Scouting beyond my own local community, working alongside young people from a wide range of organisations and discovering that issues affecting young people rarely fitted neatly into organisational boundaries. Before long I was elected to chair the delegation, my first national appointment within the Movement. It taught me valuable lessons about representation, consensus and the importance of listening before speaking—lessons that would serve me well in every boardroom I subsequently entered.

If that appointment broadened my understanding of Scouting, the next one transformed it completely.

I was invited to attend an international Guiding and Scouting conference in Larnaca, Cyprus. It is difficult now to convey quite how significant that journey proved to be. Until then, my experience of Scouting had been almost entirely British. I knew, in an abstract sense, that there were Scouts throughout the world, but I had never truly appreciated what that meant. Cyprus was the first time I encountered Scouting as a genuinely global movement rather than simply a national organisation with international links.

I still remember the sense of excitement during those first conversations. Here were people from countries I had never visited, speaking languages I did not understand and bringing experiences entirely unlike my own. Yet within minutes the differences seemed far less important than the similarities. The colours of the scarves were different, the uniforms varied, the songs were unfamiliar and the food was certainly more interesting than anything I had encountered on a British Scout camp, but the values were instantly recognisable. We all believed in service. We all believed in helping young people realise their potential. We all believed that character mattered. It struck me then, and has struck me many times since, that Scouting possesses an extraordinary ability to create trust between complete strangers.

Larnaca changed my life in ways that I could not possibly have foreseen. It awakened a fascination with international Scouting that has remained with me ever since and introduced me to friendships that continue to enrich my life decades later. More profoundly still, it challenged my assumptions about the world. International travel is often said to broaden the mind, but I think that is only partly true. Travel can just as easily reinforce stereotypes if we merely observe another country from a distance. Scouting does something much more powerful. It invites you into people’s lives. You do not simply visit another culture; you share meals, conversations, laughter and sometimes disagreement with people who become friends. The result is not simply greater knowledge, but greater understanding.

As I travelled home from Cyprus, I remember thinking that I had glimpsed something much bigger than I had ever imagined. I could not have known where that glimpse would lead. There was no master plan and certainly no ambition to build an international Scouting career. Yet looking back now, I can see that a door had quietly opened. Beyond it lay responsibilities I had never contemplated, friendships across every continent and opportunities to serve a Movement that, with each passing year, felt less like an organisation to which I belonged and more like a global family of which I was privileged to be a part.

Trusting the Young

One of the questions I am asked from time to time is how I came to hold significant leadership roles in Scouting at what, by most standards, was a comparatively young age. The truthful answer is that I never set out to pursue them. I simply said “yes” whenever an opportunity arose that seemed worthwhile. Looking back, however, I can see something much more important at work. Scouting has always been unusually willing to trust young adults with genuine responsibility. It does not insist that leadership must wait until middle age. Instead, it has the confidence to recognise potential and then gives people the chance to grow into the responsibilities entrusted to them.

I experienced that generosity time and again.

After moving to Lichfield to become a teacher, I became one of the country’s first Assistant District Commissioners for Beaver Scouts. Beaver Scouting was itself still a relatively new idea, and there was a wonderful sense that we were helping to shape something from the beginning rather than simply inheriting established practice. I became involved in developing programme resources, including materials exploring the spiritual dimension of Scouting for children under eight. It was fascinating work because it forced us to think very carefully about what we were actually trying to achieve. Young children are naturally curious. They ask questions about the world, about kindness, about fairness, about wonder and about God with a refreshing directness that adults often lose. Our task was never to provide easy answers, but to help create opportunities for exploration and reflection. Looking back, I realise that those discussions deepened my own understanding of Scouting’s purpose. It was never simply about developing practical skills or encouraging outdoor adventure. It was about nurturing the whole person.

Not long afterwards came one of the most unexpected invitations of my life.

The Chief Scout asked whether I would become the Scout Association’s International Commissioner.

I was still in my twenties.

Even now, writing those words feels slightly surreal. At the time I accepted the appointment with a mixture of excitement and mild disbelief, without stopping to ask whether I was old enough or experienced enough. It simply seemed an extraordinary opportunity to serve a Movement that had already given me so much.

The role also brought with it membership of what was then called the Committee of the Council, now the Trustee Board of The Scout Association. I can still remember walking into my first meeting and looking around the table. Most of those present had been leading Scouting for longer than I had been an adult. They possessed wisdom, experience and gravitas in abundance. I was not only the youngest person there; in many cases I was less than half the age of my fellow members. It would have been entirely understandable had they regarded me as an enthusiastic youngster who should listen quietly and learn.

They did exactly the opposite.

They listened. They questioned. They challenged my thinking when necessary, but they also treated my contribution with respect. They expected me to participate fully, not because of my age but because of the role I had been invited to undertake. Looking back, I realise how formative that experience was. One of the greatest gifts an experienced leader can offer is to trust someone before they have fully learnt to trust themselves. That confidence changes people. Throughout my own career, both within and beyond Scouting, I have tried to repay that debt by looking for talented younger colleagues and volunteers and giving them responsibilities that stretch them. We rarely discover what people are capable of until we are prepared to trust them.

International Commissioner was not a title; it was a passport into an extraordinary world of friendships and partnerships. I found myself working with colleagues from across Europe and beyond, supporting the growth of international Scouting and helping to strengthen relationships between National Scout Organizations. One area of work became particularly close to my heart. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe emerged from decades of communist rule, many Scout Associations were rebuilding or reconnecting with the wider World Organization of the Scout Movement. They were rediscovering traditions that had often been suppressed and exploring what it meant to be independent, democratic voluntary organisations once again. Working alongside them was one of the greatest privileges of my Scouting life.

Those years also saw the beginning of a relationship with Poland that has endured for decades. What began as a professional connection soon became a friendship. I have long admired the resilience, warmth and generosity of Polish Scouting and the remarkable contribution it has made, often under circumstances that demanded great courage. As I prepare to return to Poland once again for the World Scout Jamboree, I find myself reflecting on how many of the most enduring friendships in my life began with nothing more complicated than two people wearing different coloured Scout scarves and discovering that they shared the same values.

Alongside this work came opportunities to contribute to projects that remain deeply satisfying. I worked with colleagues to develop resources for Venture Scouts, helping young people prepare for adult life, including practical guidance on writing curriculum vitae and presenting themselves confidently to employers. We established the Unite partnership linking UNICEF, the Uganda Scout Association and The Scout Association, recognising that international partnerships should be based not on charity but on mutual learning and shared purpose. Within the European Scout Region, I had the privilege of supporting programme development for the Rover age section and working with newly admitted Associations as they reconnected with the World Movement after years of separation.

At the time, these simply felt like fascinating pieces of work. Only later did I appreciate the common thread running through them all. None was really about administration or programme development. Each, in its own way, was about building bridges: between generations, between countries, between cultures and between young people whose lives might otherwise never have touched. The older I become, the more convinced I am that this is one of Scouting’s greatest gifts. Long before global citizenship became an educational aspiration, Scouting was quietly helping young people understand that our common humanity is infinitely more important than the differences that so often dominate public debate.

By now, I had ceased to think of Scouting as one important part of my life. It had become the context within which almost everything else was unfolding. Yet, remarkable though those years were, they proved to be merely the preparation for an even greater privilege: serving the World Movement itself.

Serving the World Movement

One of the dangers of looking back over a long life is that events which unfolded over many years can appear, in retrospect, to have followed an inevitable path. Nothing could be further from the truth. My involvement with the World Organization of the Scout Movement was never part of some carefully considered ambition. Indeed, if anyone had suggested to the young Scout sleeping in a leaking tent at Cranham that one day he might help to lead the world body of Scouting, I would have dismissed the idea as complete fantasy. Every stage of the journey depended upon somebody opening a door, extending an invitation or placing their trust in me before I had fully appreciated where it might lead.

Not every door opened immediately.

When I first stood for election to the World Scout Committee, I was unsuccessful. I have written about this experience elsewhere. Like anyone who has offered themselves for election, I was disappointed. It is impossible to invest time, energy and hope in such a process without feeling the sting of defeat. Looking back now, however, I suspect it was one of the most valuable experiences of my Scouting life. It reminded me that wanting something is not the same as being ready for it. I had more to learn, more relationships to build and, perhaps above all, a little more patience to acquire. Failure has an extraordinary capacity to clarify motivation. It forces us to ask whether we are pursuing a position for its status or for the opportunity it offers to serve. Once the disappointment had passed, I realised that my answer remained exactly the same. I still wanted to contribute, whether or not I held a particular office.

Three years later I stood again.

This time I was elected.

What followed remains one of the greatest privileges of my life. Serving on the World Scout Committee is unlike almost any other leadership role. The questions before us were rarely straightforward. How does a movement spanning every continent remain united while respecting enormous cultural diversity? How do you support rapidly growing Scout Associations in Africa while also responding to the different challenges facing long-established organisations in Europe? How do you remain true to fundamental values while encouraging innovation? There were no easy answers, but there was something profoundly inspiring about working with colleagues from every corner of the globe, each bringing different experiences yet sharing an unwavering commitment to young people.

In time, I was elected Vice Chair of the Committee, another honour that I could never have imagined when I first joined Scouting. The role took me to countries I had scarcely heard of as a boy and introduced me to leaders whose wisdom and generosity continue to inspire me today. Yet the travel itself was never the point. What mattered were the conversations, the relationships and the constant reminder that Scouting is at its strongest when it listens before it speaks. I have often thought that one of the Movement’s greatest strengths is its humility. It does not assume that wisdom resides in one country or one culture. Instead, it creates opportunities for people to learn from one another. Again and again I returned home convinced that I had received far more than I had contributed.

Those years also reinforced another conviction that has stayed with me throughout my career. Young people are not simply the beneficiaries of Scouting; they are among its greatest teachers. Whether I was meeting Scouts in Chile, Sweden, Japan, the United States or countless other countries, I was continually struck by their optimism. Adults often become preoccupied with the world’s problems. Young people have a remarkable ability to focus instead on its possibilities. They see injustice clearly, but they also believe, often with disarming confidence, that it can be overcome. Spending time in their company is one of the surest antidotes to cynicism I know.

The World Scout Jamborees became milestones along that journey. Each was different, reflecting the character of its host nation, yet each demonstrated the same simple truth. Gather together tens of thousands of young people from every conceivable background and they will spend remarkably little time dwelling on what divides them. Instead, they exchange scarves, share songs, cook meals together, laugh together and discover that friendship crosses borders with an ease that politics often struggles to match. I have attended Jamborees in Chile, Sweden, Japan and the United States, looked forward to Korea with great anticipation before circumstances intervened, and now find myself preparing for another in Poland. Every one has renewed my faith in the extraordinary potential of young people when given the chance to meet as equals.

People sometimes ask whether international Scouting still matters in a world connected by social media, instant messaging and inexpensive travel. I have never found the question difficult to answer. Technology allows us to communicate; it does not necessarily help us to understand one another. Understanding is built by sharing experiences, by living alongside people whose assumptions differ from our own, by discovering that the stranger we were slightly uncertain about on the first day has become a close friend by the end of the week. Those encounters change people in ways that no video call ever can. They certainly changed me.

For all the extraordinary international opportunities Scouting has given me, however, I have never forgotten where the Movement’s real strength lies. Every decision taken by the World Scout Committee, every strategy, every conference and every global initiative ultimately depends upon what happens in local Scout Groups on ordinary weekday evenings. The future of Scouting is not determined in Geneva or Kuala Lumpur or Brussels. It is shaped in church halls, school classrooms, village huts and community centres by volunteers who turn up week after week because they believe that the next generation deserves the same opportunities they themselves were once given. If my years in world Scouting taught me anything, it was that global movements are sustained not by international leaders but by local volunteers.

That conviction has never left me. Indeed, it explains why I have always regarded serving Scouting in Oxfordshire and serving as President of British Scouting Overseas as honours every bit as meaningful as any international appointment. The scale may be different, but the purpose is exactly the same: helping young people discover that they are capable of more than they imagine, and supporting volunteers who quietly devote themselves to making that happen. In the end, that is where Scouting has always been at its strongest—not in its structures or its strategy, but in the extraordinary generosity of ordinary people.

The Thread Through Everything

As I look back over more than half a century in Scouting, I am increasingly struck by one simple realisation. I have often changed jobs, but I have rarely changed my vocation.

On paper, my career appears to have taken a series of unexpected turns. I have worked in education, youth development, international civil society, governance, public service and, today, animal welfare. They seem, at first glance, to have very little in common. Friends have occasionally joked that I have had an unusual talent for moving from one sector to another just as I was beginning to understand the previous one. There is perhaps a grain of truth in that. Yet the older I become, the more convinced I am that I have really been doing the same job all along.

Scouting simply taught me to do it.

Whether leading Career Ready, serving as Secretary General of The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, chairing Oxfordshire Youth, serving my county through the Lieutenancy or leading Cats Protection, the questions have remained remarkably consistent. How do you help people become the best version of themselves? How do you build organisations that outlast the individuals who happen to lead them? How do you create cultures in which volunteers and staff alike feel trusted, valued and able to flourish? How do you hold firmly to a set of values while adapting confidently to a changing world? Those are leadership questions, certainly, but they are also profoundly Scout questions. Long before I encountered them in boardrooms, I had encountered them around campfires.

People occasionally ask what leading a national youth movement has in common with leading the UK’s largest cat welfare charity. On the face of it, the answer would appear to be “very little”. Yet I have always smiled at the question because, in reality, they have much in common. Both are values-led movements. Both depend upon volunteers who choose to give their time because they believe passionately in a cause larger than themselves. Both require leaders who understand that influence matters more than authority and that lasting change is built through trust rather than command. Above all, both remind me every day that leadership is not about being the most important person in the room. It is about helping everyone else to succeed.

If Scouting has given me a philosophy of leadership, it can probably be expressed remarkably simply. Trust people before they think they are ready. Give them genuine responsibility rather than carefully managed tasks. Expect a great deal of them, but support them generously when they fail. Listen more than you speak. Remember that titles are temporary but character endures. Leave every organisation stronger than you found it. Above all, never forget that leadership is an act of service. I have spent a lifetime trying to live by those principles, although I cannot claim always to have succeeded. They remain aspirations as much as achievements.

There is another lesson that has become increasingly important to me as the years have passed. The older I become, the less interested I am in famous Scouts. Every movement naturally celebrates those who have reached high office or achieved public distinction, and there is nothing wrong with that. Yet when I think of the people who have most influenced my own life, I rarely think first of those whose names are widely recognised. I think instead of the Beaver leader who patiently welcomed nervous five-year-olds into the Colony, the Cub leader who somehow managed to remember every child’s birthday, the Scout Leader who gave up weeks of annual leave to take young people camping, the Group Scout Leader who quietly kept the whole enterprise together, the campsite warden who ensured that everything worked before anyone else arrived, and the countless trustees, commissioners, instructors, quartermasters and parents who simply turned up, year after year, because they believed young people mattered.

They are the true custodians of Scouting.

Few of them will receive honours or public recognition. Most would probably feel rather embarrassed if anyone attempted to thank them in public. Yet without them there would be no World Scout Committee, no World Scout Jamborees, no international conferences and certainly no essay such as this. The movement has always been built from the ground upwards, sustained by ordinary people doing extraordinary things with remarkable consistency. If I have one regret, it is that we do not celebrate them nearly often enough.

That brings me back to the question with which I began. Why, after all these years, do I still wear a Scout scarf on 1 August?

The answer, I think, is now rather clearer than it was when I sat down to write these reflections.

I wear it because Scouting has never really been something I did.

It has been the thread running quietly through every significant chapter of my life. It introduced me to my closest friends and, indeed, to the man who became my husband. It gave me my first experience of leadership and my first taste of international understanding. It taught me to serve long before I understood that service could become the organising principle of a career. It challenged me, humbled me, occasionally disappointed me, frequently surprised me and continually reminded me that the world is a better place than the headlines sometimes suggest.

Most of all, it taught me to believe in people.

Not because they are perfect, but because they are capable of becoming better than they imagine.

That, I have come to believe, is the real genius of Scouting. It is not fundamentally about camping, badges or uniforms, valuable though all of those things undoubtedly are. It is one of the world’s great schools of character. It takes ordinary young people, trusts them with responsibility, surrounds them with adults who believe in them and quietly encourages them to become adults who, in turn, will do the same for the generation that follows. It is an elegantly simple idea, and after almost 120 years it continues to change lives in ways that its founder could scarcely have imagined.

I count myself extraordinarily fortunate that it changed mine.

The Promise

Scouting has changed almost beyond recognition since my first wet camp at Cranham, and that is as it should be. A movement whose purpose is to prepare young people for the future cannot be preserved as a museum piece from the past. It has become more inclusive, more international and more responsive to the lives young people actually lead. It has sometimes adapted confidently and sometimes less quickly than it should, but the central educational insight has endured: young people flourish when they are trusted with real responsibility, stretched by adventure, encouraged to serve others and invited to consider questions larger than themselves.

Like every historical figure, Baden-Powell belonged to his own age and should be understood honestly within it. Scouting’s future has never depended upon treating its founder as beyond examination, nor upon attempting to reproduce indefinitely the world in which the Movement began. His lasting achievement was to identify something fundamental about young people: that character is not formed principally through instruction, but through experience; that confidence grows when responsibility is genuinely given; and that service, friendship and adventure can help people see beyond the limits of their own circumstances. That idea has survived because successive generations have been willing not merely to preserve it, but to reinterpret it for their own time.

The spiritual dimension has always mattered to me as part of that wider purpose. My early work on programme materials for Beaver Scouts required us to think about how children under eight might begin to explore wonder, kindness, belonging and their relationship with something greater than themselves. Later, as Scout Associations in Central and Eastern Europe reconnected with the World Movement, I saw how important it was that concepts such as duty to God should be approached with both seriousness and humility. Scouting has never been at its best when it offers easy theological answers. Its strength lies in making room for reflection, reverence and the possibility that a worthwhile life is measured by more than personal advancement.

That conviction has shaped my career as surely as any formal qualification. It has encouraged me to think of leadership as stewardship and of organisations as things held temporarily in trust. It has taught me to ask whether institutions will be stronger after I leave them, whether other people have grown through working alongside me and whether the purpose has remained more important than the personality of the leader. I have not always met those tests as well as I would have wished, but they are the tests I return to. Scouting did not give me a formula for leadership. It gave me a compass.

It also gave me the friendships through which life itself has been lived. Some began on campsites, some in committee rooms and others in airport departure lounges at improbable hours. Steve Peck, with whom I learnt so much about leading adults and international contingents, became the best man at my wedding. Most precious of all, Scouting brought Mark into my life. Any account of what the Movement has given me that failed to acknowledge that gift would be incomplete. Appointments end, events become memories and even the most treasured scarves eventually fade, but the people with whom we share the journey are the true measure of what has mattered.

There has, of course, been a cost in time. Scouting has consumed evenings, weekends, annual leave and a substantial portion of the space in our cupboards. It has involved long journeys, delayed flights, difficult meetings, uncomfortable beds and an amount of camp catering that probably ought to have carried a health warning. Yet I have never experienced those years primarily as sacrifice. Vocation is seldom felt as time taken away from life; it is one of the ways in which life finds its meaning. I have received infinitely more from Scouting than I could ever return.

That is why World Scout Scarf Day matters to me. On 1 August, after the cat has made it abundantly clear that breakfast takes precedence over reflection, I shall once again open the drawer and choose a scarf. Perhaps it will be one from a World Scout Jamboree, one associated with an appointment, one given by friends overseas or one that reminds me of service closer to home. Whichever I choose, it will connect me with millions of people wearing different colours in different countries for much the same reason. We shall be remembering not simply an organisation, but a Promise that has shaped the way we try to live.

When I first made that Promise as a boy, I could not have understood what it would come to mean. I thought Scouting was about camping, fires, friendships and adventure, and of course it was. It took me much longer to realise that its deeper purpose was to encourage ordinary people to live lives of responsibility, service and hope. It taught me that the world is enlarged whenever a young person discovers a new possibility, whenever a volunteer chooses to turn up, whenever strangers become friends and whenever someone decides to leave a community stronger than they found it.

One day, inevitably, I shall wear a Scout scarf for the last time. By then the appointments I held and the committees on which I served will matter very little. What will matter is whether I tried to keep the Promise: whether I served when service was required, whether I helped other people discover their own potential, whether I used the opportunities placed before me with generosity, and whether I left behind stronger people and stronger institutions than those I inherited.

I shall not have done any of those things perfectly. None of us does. A Promise is not a declaration that we have arrived; it is a commitment to keep travelling in the right direction. Mine began in a Scout Troop at Wycliffe College, survived a very wet tent at Cranham, carried me from Bristol and Oxford to friendships and responsibilities across the world, and continues to guide me today.

So, on Scouting’s birthday, I offer no grand conclusion. Only thanks: for the adventures and the laughter; for the trust placed in me when I was young; for the failures that taught patience; for the volunteers whose quiet service has sustained the Movement; for the countries, cultures and communities that transformed my understanding of the world; for Steve, for Mark and for friendships beyond number; and for the countless young people who have repeatedly renewed my confidence in the future.

Scouting did not simply give me things to do. It gave me a way to live. More than fifty years after I first tied on a scarf, I am still trying to be worthy of the Promise I made.