There is something rather reassuring about arriving at a large Scout camp. Before you have spoken to anyone, before you have seen the programme or unfolded a map, you know roughly what you will find. Leaders wrestling with logistics. Young people laughing, building, exploring and making new friends. Somewhere, someone looking for a missing mallet. There is a familiar rhythm to these places, and it never takes long to feel at home.
Poacher International Jamboree, held in the Lincolnshire countryside, offered all of that and much more. It is an open and distinctly windy site. On a hot August Monday afternoon, the breeze was often very welcome, although it also carried the danger of making everyone forget quite how fierce the sun still was. The wind felt wonderfully refreshing, but hats, water and sun cream remained every bit as important.
Mark and I were welcomed by two members of the staff team who became our guides for the afternoon: an Explorer Scout and a Ranger. They were outstanding ambassadors for the event. With confidence, warmth and obvious pride, they explained the activities taking place across the site, answered my many questions about the logistics with patience and good humour, and eventually delivered us safely into the hands of the British Scouting Overseas contingent for tea and biscuits.
What struck me was not simply how well they performed the role, but the fact that they had been trusted with it. They were not accompanying us as a token gesture. They were representing the camp, interpreting it for visitors and exercising real responsibility. It was an excellent reminder that some of the best leadership development in Scouting happens because young people are given meaningful opportunities to lead.
One of the real pleasures of the afternoon was spending time with the contingent from the Middle East District of British Scouting Overseas. It was lovely to see familiar faces from a part of Scouting with which I have enjoyed a long association. Camping alongside them was the British Scouting Overseas unit preparing for next year’s World Scout Jamboree in Poland. Their excitement was infectious. The Jamboree itself may still be months away, but the adventure has already begun.
As always, I found myself spending as much time talking with adult volunteers as with young people. They were busy, solving problems before anyone else noticed them, quietly adjusting plans as circumstances changed and creating the conditions in which hundreds of young people could enjoy an extraordinary experience. Like so much of Scouting, their finest work was almost invisible.
Walking around the site, I found myself reflecting on something that has been much on my mind recently. Young people do not come to Scouting because they are searching for an educational experience. They come because they want adventure. They come for friendship, challenge, camping, laughter and the chance to do things they cannot do anywhere else.
And that is precisely as it should be.
Sometimes those of us who spend time thinking about Scouting become preoccupied with educational models, developmental frameworks and learning objectives. Those things matter. Indeed, they matter enormously. But it is important to remember what kind of education Scouting actually provides.
Scouting is not informal learning, where people simply happen to pick things up by accident as life unfolds. It is non-formal education and learning. The distinction is important.
The educational element lies in the careful design of the programme. Adults, and those who design programmes, training and resources, think deeply about purpose, progression and opportunity. Activities are chosen intentionally, but that does not mean narrowly. At Poacher there were literally hundreds of things for young people to do: highly adventurous activities, fairground experiences, crafts, performances, challenges and games, as well as the simple pleasure of sitting and talking with new friends. The richness of the programme lay not in forcing every young person down the same path, but in creating a huge range of purposeful opportunities from which they could choose.
Responsibility is introduced progressively. Challenge is balanced with support. Young people are given scope to decide how they will spend their time, what they will attempt, whom they will meet and what they will make of the experience. None of this is accidental, but neither is it over-directed.
The learning, however, belongs to the young person.
That is more than a matter of language. It reflects a profound belief that young people are active participants in their own development, not passive recipients of someone else’s teaching. They learn by choosing, by doing, by reflecting, by succeeding, by making mistakes and by trying again. Adults create the conditions in which learning can flourish, but they cannot do the learning on behalf of young people.
These reflections also took me back many years to a period when I had the privilege of chairing Scouting’s World Programme Committee. At that time, the World Organization of the Scout Movement was developing what became known as the Renewed Approach to Programme, or RAP: an international framework designed to help National Scout Organizations review and strengthen their youth programmes while remaining true to the Scout Method and Baden-Powell’s educational vision.
What fascinated me then, and continues to influence my thinking today, was the philosophy behind the work. Educationalists from around the world invested enormous effort in identifying developmental outcomes, educational objectives and learning intentions. Their work gave coherence, rigour and integrity to programme design.Yet the purpose was never that every Scout or every volunteer should become an expert in educational theory. Quite the opposite. The ambition was that good educational thinking should be woven so naturally into the programme that leaders could concentrate on creating great experiences, while young people simply got on with the business of learning through adventure, friendship, challenge and service.
That, to me, remains one of the hallmarks of good Scouting. The educational architecture matters enormously, but it should support the experience rather than compete with it. Good programme design quietly carries the educational thinking within it.
As I watched the camp unfold, I saw young people making decisions, solving problems, helping one another, leading teams, welcoming strangers and growing in confidence. None of them described these moments in educational language. They were simply enjoying themselves.Yet the learning was unmistakable.
Before leaving the site, Mark and I dropped in to see my dear friend Kester and her group. Young people were beginning to return after their afternoon of activities, bringing with them the energy, stories and cheerful disorder of a day well spent. There was not quite enough hot water at that moment to produce more mugs of tea, although by then Mark and I were already fairly overflowing with it. What there was in abundance was conversation and the comfortable sense of a group gathering itself together again after adventures across the site.
Driving home towards the M1, I reflected that Poacher had offered far more than an enjoyable day out. It had reminded me, once again, why Scouting has endured for well over a century. We create environments where young people can belong, contribute, make choices, shoulder responsibility, discover who they are and become more than they imagined possible.
Most of those at Poacher will remember a wonderful camp, great friends and unforgettable adventures. Years from now, many of them will realise that they also learned something about themselves.
They simply did not need anyone to tell them that at the time.
