Anyone got a Scout or Explorer going to WSJ in South Korea?

[lazylittlelucy]

Just thought I'd start a thread for parents if there are any on here.
My 17yo DD is going as an Explorer and is getting excited now.
Anyone else?

@CheersToMe it's good isn't it. I loved the videos of the kids too esp things like doing Mexican waves at the football- just being kids! Our unit wasn't back in Seoul in time for that but it looked like great fun.

In 2019 the entire UKC a went to a baseball match which became the stuff of legend due to their crowd antics!

So now we are over the crisis if you want to experience the humour that has been getting them through look at @wsj2023_memes on Instagram.

Update: the jamboree is closing due to a typhoon approaching.

https://www.scout.org/news/statement-25th-jamboree?fbclid=IwAR2mTe9aemz3zlmUHFQIjSoenk6wr8tHuuXsxujV-XCPDt_jO2dEZPanRP4_aem_AW6Pzj6XFAxXrhFm07mhDbASlGLOooOPBZHvJflbTPPj0sbR_546KW1iS3Z35DTF4CA

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Aww that video made me cry. Well done UK scouts and leaders. You're the best.

As I said DH called it upthread, the UK saw this coming and the typhoon was something on top of the conditions on site that the UK had to prepare for. It took two days to get 4500 UK scouts and 1500 US scouts off site. The UK got 'first dibs' on places to stay.

The information from yesterday states clearly that the incoming weather was part of the discussion between the various contingents (Inc UK) and the Korean authorities as early as Thursday/Friday last week.

They've now got to get everyone left of the 43000 off site before Wednesday when the Typhoon in incoming. There is every chance of flight delays out of South Korea at this point due to the weather now.

He's also been spot on about the money. BBC article is quoting the chief executive of UK scouts saying it's cost over £1million to get the kids into hotels and that dipping into the reserves now means UK scouts can't do the things that money was allocated for, for the next 3 to 5 years. They also said they had spotted many of the issues before the event and were told they would be resolved but they weren't.

There's a whole bunch of safety issues for the remaining contingents at the site and that's who everyone should be worried about at this point, the organisers determination to plough on regardless now just looks fucking fool hardy and pig headed and anything but being prepared. They've been bloody reckless.

Meanwhile UK scouts are fucked over by it all for years but have been ahead of the game and made decisions in a timely fashion as and when they've been forced to.

It's a total car crash and shit show. I hope UK scouts do decide to sue the south Korean government.

Would this now be covered by insurance, now they’ve had to pull them all offsite, although I assume that will hit insurance premiums and increase costs going forward.

I wonder if this will mark the beginning of the end of such large gatherings, as costs increase and they are not exactly environmentally friendly.

It'd be such a shame for all the kids that miss that opportunity but I think I'm more concerned about the basics of scouting experience for younger kids now. At least the kids in Korea currently had 4 or 5 days of that experience.

My DH said he reckons the WSJ will fizzle out after the next couple. The small scale events will continue though.

(Luke the one he attends... its a long weekend, annual, different European country each year and largely the same groups who build up networks between themselves over the years.)

The closing ceremony/ K-pop gig on Friday has now been moved to Seoul.

I see the evacuation doesn't look like it's going to start until tomorrow. The typhoon starts to hit South Korea the following day. They are cutting it fine.

The forecast doesn't look too scary for the site in the sense of the huge rainfalls and winds predicted for the other coast but the site is so exposed and sensitive to rainfall that anything will be problematic.

I guess Poland may be the last WSJ. Looking at comments on twitter, leaders don't think WSJ is all it's cracked up to be - good experience but not life changing. They seem to prefer other formats of world interaction which is interesting. Looks like there isn't the support for WSJ there probably needs to be to maintain it long term.

The BBC has been told that some scouts are sharing five to a room, while up to 250 slept in the ballroom of one Seoul hotel for one night. All now have hotel rooms.

^www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66425793^
^^

I've been watching this pan out - as the parent of a Scout and a about-to-get-moved-up-from-Cubs just to see how UK Scouting are handling it. No issues at all in trust with my kids' group leaders - hell they had to pull the final night of their summer camp recently when the weather forecast went from Dire British Summer to Utterly Fucking Awful - and I know that they don't let the weather beat them lightly at all!

If I'd fundraised and had a kid out there I would be fucking livid with the initial reported conditions that the site was in though - UK Scouting getting them the fuck out of there, even if they're sleeping on the floor of conference centres... no issue at all with - as long as the kids are being treated well, and it's not being overplayed to them as anything other than a huge adventure and they're happy. Being honest - DD1 would have loved the drama once she was out of the crap weather - she'd be the sort to be living that up for years.

Concerned as fuck about how this is going to screw over all the younger kids coming through in terms of opportunities though as this is going to put a crater in finances for years and years to come.

Sounds to me as if someone may be misinterpreting what the GDPR actually say.

To be fair - 5 in a hotel room or a mega sleepover in a ballroom is absolute luxury compared to a dozen camping in a patrol tent and nothing scouts won't have done before.

As much as the Word Scouting organisation are to blame for not seeing a problem with having a jamboree on a reclaimed wetland site below sea level in typhoon season - isn't this something that individual national organisations should have foreseen also? Accepting assurances that everything would be fine seems a little naive.

I've been saying this for the last couple of days - I am not worried about the UK Scouts (or US) who are fortunate enough to have the superb backing from UK Scouting, who have done a magnificent job to get them safe and comfortable.
I am much more concerned about the other 40000 odd Scouts still on site.

I think one of the issues is about who gets to go to WSJ. It's a political issue every time with some dubious selections. Locally the selections for both EuroJam and WSJ left a huge amount of resentment that simmered under the surface. It's not so much leaders kids who get to go - but there is a problem with fairness and transparency. But more than that, it's so rarely the really less well off kids because even with fundraising parents typically end up footing some of the bill regardless cos it's such a huge amount.

If I'm honest I've always felt that fundraising for some of these trips is somewhat dubious given what fundraising more generally for scouts would enable. I'd love DS to do one, but part of me finds it a paradox in terms of liability and who can do them and on what terms. And this highlights to me that they are risky to the organisation as a whole and that's something that's now going to have to be considered and factored in for planning.

I fear the real cost will be be born by the less well off scouts for whom just being in cubs and scouts is life changing. It's time away from home and away from school. We see so many kids who haven't perhaps done as well in school thrive in scouting and get confidence they don't get elsewhere. Many won't get to explorer level. The prospect of attending WSJ is beyond all but a tiny minority. It's a real privilege and even now, needs to be seen by those in the eye of the storm as that. That needs to be the perspective here. WSJ is the icing on the cake of a scouting experience - it isn't the most important thing by a long shot. Yet it's this premium event which will kill opportunities for many more - probably thousands of kids.

It'll be things like investment in various kit and buildings that go. A loss of a camp site is almost inevitable at this point. Fees will have to go up across the board, and I'm not sure how sustainable that is for troops who are already struggling. Some will fold.

And this isn't just restricted to the UK. The US have been bailed out by the US military. They were bankrupt earlier this year. They can afford this cluster fuck even less than the UK can. Other national scouting associations could well be bankrupt by it. It is one reason many will have kept their kids onsite as long as they have - they simply didn't have the option financially to get them off-site.

It is completely catastrophic for world scouting. And this can't be understated.

The priority is safety. The UK kids are fine. The rest of the world kids are the next priority. The Korean authorities run the risk of fucking up the evacuation at this point.

But this has a huge cost that the kids there won't even consider or be aware of.

You can't share data unless there is a purpose and a need. DH works in tech. He's worked at a law firm and had to be shit hot on GDPR as his job. Trust me he knows his shit on this. There is no reason or need to share lists of those going on camps beyond the core organisation group. Sharing with all county or district doesn't have a purpose.

To a point. But if you have the assurances of a national government behind it and the world governing body, it's difficult diplomatically and practically for the national associations - especially after money has been put down. They wouldn't be covered by insurance at that point for a late pull out. There will also be diplomatic pressure generally as it would be seen as a major slight from the UK to the South Korean one.

There has to be an element of trust where national associations have faith in the organisations above them. That's failed.

There has been a huge PR job by the South Korean government over this - even today the South Korean English language press is doing a big push on how good the event is. And they've had the prime minister involved putting pressure on the national associations - I note the explicit remark that they would not cover the costs of any nation that pulled the plug themselves. World scouting DID try and get the Koreans to end the event earlier - again it's something said explicitly in one of their statements - but were almost railroaded into it continuing by the Koreans who insisted they wouldn't end it early. Remember various national embassies were also involved in this discussion too so we don't know how much national governments were leaning on national associations (I bet quite a lot because they didn't want to make the south Koreans look bad due to the cultural issue of saving face).

I do think there's lessons to be learned from this none the less.

I think South Korea is possible one of the countries where this is a bigger cultural issue. There has been research into plane crashes that highlights this concept of 'saving face' and not challenging higher authority when seeing a problem is actually dangerous. South Korea was one nation identified as having a higher rate of incidents as a direct result of this. Airlines now have specialist cultural training for pilots from 'high risk' cultural backgrounds to encourage them to challenge if they see a problem and to go against this idea of embarrassing people higher up. I think scouting has been a victim of this - and has put kids and the entire organisation at risk as a result. I am fairly sure this will be a factor raised during the post-mortem about how hard it was to hold authority to account and to challenge from below.

Ironically, culturally too, the UK breaking ranks with others shouldnt come as a surprise. It's acting to form - and is something embedded into the mentality of our military (and something we teach to others in terms of chain of command in crisis situations).

I dunno. I think UK scouting maybe could/should have done more even earlier but I do think hands were tied and the pressure to attend was enormous. Especially given the cancellation of EuroJam and the last moot.

@RedToothBrush in our District the young people who go on WSJ mainly come from one scout group, which probably has a slightly higher number of wealthier parents (and it is usually their kids who go). This isn’t the largest group in the District. The largest group never has any WSJ attendees but this group is in an area with a completely different demographic.

DS never showed an interest in going but DH said if he had he would have felt awkward asking other people for money when we could have saved up money to send him.

Fundraising activities for WSJ also take away money that could be used by the group as a whole

That video is lovely. Pure scouting gold. He is a great role model

Locally the selections for both EuroJam and WSJ left a huge amount of resentment that simmered under the surface. It's not so much leaders kids who get to go - but there is a problem with fairness and transparency. But more than that, it's so rarely the really less well off kids because even with fundraising parents typically end up footing some of the bill regardless cos it's such a huge amount.

I think you have contributed SO much to this thread @RedToothBrush but this particular comment is a local issue. It is definitely not the case in our County. We have a considerable % of our Unit where family income is under £21K

Definitely not the case everywhere and that's a problem though.

@UsingChangeofName I’ve seen the same as @RedToothBrush in our District. If you are in a low income demographic how do you achieve the fundraising targets? Our District is rural so the number of events and people you can target for money is limited so I guess that also has an impact. If you are a small village group you have a small population to ask for funds from and are also competing with local school PTA, so the same parents

Yes, I would agree it ought to be the case everywhere @RedToothBrush

@toomuchlaundry our families who qualified had a lot lower target to aim for . The County and HQ both provided funds towards the total and the County worked hard to apply for other funding too. I can't answer you question about village fundraising as we are in a big City, but a lot of the most successful fundraising is done by people the young person knows buying tickets to things, not so much from 'random members of the public' so the same would apply in terms of competing with PTA fundraising, and local sports teams and so forth.