Charitable Brit scouts ask for helping hand as they embark on life-changing trip
The group of 36 scouts work tirelessly improving communities at home and abroad - but have turned to Sun readers for help with their latest project
CHARITABLE London scouts who work tirelessly in communities at home and abroad have reached out to Sun readers for a helping hand as they embark on a life-changing trip.
The group travelling to the global gathering in 2019, whose community work can span from maintaining their local parks to building sustainable resources worldwide, are the latest in several scouting generations in London since 1907.
In August 2019, 36 scouts will represent the North London area as they head to the 24th World Scout Jamboree in west Virginia, and 16-year-old Jake Keenan says it's an "honour" to be selected as scouting has opened doors for him at home and abroad.
He said: "I've been able to do things I wouldn't normally be able to do, while doing a lot of charity work both locally and internationally.
"This summer we'll go to Peru to build a greenhouse for an impoverished community, which will be a sustainable project to allow them to grow a variety of crops."
Working alongside Peruvian charity Living Heart, the scouts will travel to Viacha, a small community in the Andes to build a thermal mass greenhouse, from local stone and mud.
The sustainable greenhouse has been carefully designed to retain heat and moisture allowing for crops to be grown - a vital resource in remote Viacha as the climate and poor soil mean it is extremely difficult to grow anything other than potatoes.
But the greatest hurdles the scouts face is fundraising for their work, which is why Jake Keenan has reached out to Sun readers to give their 2019 trip to the US a boost.
The global gathering of 40,000 scouts from 216 countries at the World Scout Jamboree in West Virginia aims to teach young people peace and co-operation to the people who may not be able to meet each other otherwise, as well as enjoying adventure activities on the reserve.
Jake says: "It's an honour to be picked, the trip will allow me to broaden my horizons and meet people from different places, learning life skills I can't learn in school. I'm incredibly lucky - lucky to get onto it and lucky to experience it."
And leader John Nelson, who will accompany the group in 2019, says the opportunities at the jamboree can be life-changing for young scouts.
John said: “To thrive in a jamboree environment you’ve got to be someone who wants to meet the rest of the world and make it a better place through new international friendships and forming bonds with people they wouldn’t ever meet."
The two week trip to the US costs £4,100 per scout but the group have decided that instead of each person paying individually, they're fundraising the total £164,000 as a team, some of which will also help scouts from poorer parts of the world attend the event.
As part of their effort, the group spends weekends washing cars, bag packing, quiz nights, anything they can do "to ensure the opportunity is completely open to each person," John adds.
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Jake says: "The fundraising means no scout is excluded, and this trip is an opportunity for each scout to improve on their leadership and life skills, and learn peace and co-operation with other nations who may never meet each other otherwise."
Leader John adds:"The world can appear to be a very bad place, but when you see young people from countries that are potentially at war with each other, together at the jamboree there's no tension or problems between them.
"If we can get young people on board with seeing the world and understanding new people, then that's a good thing from my point of view."
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