When they returned to school this week, many students were inevitably asked what they did on their summer vacations. Undoubtedly, many answered with tales of visits to the family cabin, or driving trips to the lake or to go camping.
For eight local youths, they were lucky to go a little farther abroad to Finland, more than 6,500 km away. The country is mostly flat but with a lot of forests, has many fine fjords on the Baltic Sea and nearly 200,000 lakes inland.
It’s also the land of the annual Roihu Finnjamboree, a place where more than 15,000 Scouts from all over the world (including only 167 from Canada) went to take part in wilderness adventures, cooking classes and even an international exhibition during the last half of July. Scouting, after all, is about developing self-reliance, teamwork, life experience and friendships. What better way to accomplish all of these things during an adventure half a world away.
It was 16-year-old Sofia Guest’s first international jamboree and it won’t be her last if she can help it. It took the group three years to fundraise around $30,000 to pay for the trip. Sophia said she wasn’t really sure what to expect. She was pleasantly surprised by how awesome it was.
“It was kind of surreal that we were actually there. I really, really enjoyed it!” she exclaimed. “I think it might have been my favourite. It was a lot of fun. It’s a really cool experience.”
“You get to meet a lot of people that you never would have met otherwise. You get to try a lot of things that you never would have done. You learn a lot.”
Part of her time was involved in something called Home Hospitality, where she and a teammate actually stayed in a local family’s home. It was wonderful to actually get to know the people, learn their history and see how they live. She even made some lasting friendships out of the whole deal.
She also really loved Finnish culture and appreciated its differences from life here in Canada. There were a lot of similarities, she said, but she noticed how much more popular Scouting is there than here. About four-fifths of the Jamboree participants were Finnish, and Jamborees in Canada see maybe a third of the total attendance that this one did.
“I highly suggest if you’re interested in travel that Scouting is definitely a unique way of doing that,” Sofia finished.
Jamie Guest, 14, has been in Scouting for a solid decade but has never done anything like this before either. Sister Sofia didn’t have to work too hard to convince him to sign up for it. After all, he likes meeting lots of people, he said.
One of his favourite memories of Finland was taking a two-day cycling trip. “I brought my hammock and went overnight biking with some people that I got to meet doing activities at the Jamboree. I also did some fishing with one of the guys who was closer to my age.”
Like his older sis, Jamie would recommend this to others.
“You don’t get to have this kind of experience anyway else, I don’t think. Your parents aren’t with you – well, in my case, they were. But they’re not there as parents; they’re there as leaders. It was a lot of fun. It was an amazing experience. I’d want to do it again, over and over and over.”
Mom and scout leader Michelle Guest-Moore has done many camps with Scouts and Girl Guides but this was the biggest and most distant one for her. It was an immeasurable relief to have the assistance and hospitality of so many Scouting leaders and families in Finland. They facilitated a lot of the journey beforehand and so a lot of the relationships had already been fostered even before they flew over.
“It was really cool to put faces to names and get to experience it with them. You were already friends before you got there,” she said, adding that all of the youths are still Skyping their new Finnish friends, making hopeful future plans for their trips here to Canada.
The benefits to her were somewhat different than they were to her younger travelling companions.
“I got to see these youths grow up and mature, and gain leadership skills, gain confidence, learn things about themselves that they wouldn’t normally learn because they’re not challenged in that way,” she stated, calling it a “gift” that other parents should encourage with their own children.
“Scouts Canada is youth-led. They set their own agenda and decided how they were going to do it. To get that empowerment and that experience, to grow and learn and make their own decisions, and then actually experience the results of those decisions is just a gift that most parents are a little leery to give their youths.”
The only downside, she said, was a small case of lost luggage.
“The trip was better than we ever could have imagined.”
