As all scouting activities have adjusted this spring and summer because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has the planning of Jamboree21. We have at all times kept a close eye on the development and had hoped we would be able to gather next summer. Longing for the day we can meet up at the camp site in Norra Åsum has helped us through many socially distanced evenings and digital planning meetings.
We can now see that the development in Sweden and the rest of the world is not going the way we hoped for in the beginning of this fall. As time have passed by more and more signs of the pandemic greatly effecting our ability to organise a scout camp as large as Jamboree21 next summer has occurred. It´s at last obvious that we won’t have enough information about how the circumstances around COVID-19 will develop until very late in the process.
Based on this, the national board of the Guides and Scouts of Sweden have now decided to postpone our national jamboree to the summer of 2022. Jamboree21 will become Jamboree22.
We find it incredibly sad that we’ll have to wait another year to see tents being raised, hearing scouts talk about the best activities and where to find the best candy stand but the pandemic is a factor we simply can’t do anything about. We can only organise a camp with thousands of people if we have the possibility to do so safely and responsibly, for the participants sake as well as for the society at large.
We will not cancel, but we will adjust. The dream of a sustainable world will live on. Now we get to dream for even longer about how fun we will have when we at last can gather at the camp site in the summer of 2022. The need of a Jamboree will be even greater after such a long period of social restrictions in school, at work, in scouting and everywhere else. Our awesome (Åsum) planning team will in the meantime continue to create the best program, food, showers, networks, cafés, roads and everything else that´s needed for making dreams come become reality.
Elin Jungevi and Martin Björgell
Camp Chiefs, Jamboree22