1st Wargrave Beavers, Cubs and Scouts had a fun time participating in JOTA (Jamboree On The Air) and JOTI (Jamboree On The Internet) which took place at our Hut on the Recreation Ground on Sunday 16th October.

JOTA-JOTI (http://jotajoti.info/) occurs over the third weekend in October and is an international jamboree taking place around the world simultaneously. It is organised by WOSM, the World Organisation of the Scout Movement. Scouts from all over the world communicate over the Air (using Amateur Radio) and the Internet using any technology locally available. There are lots of different ways to communicate, including text-based chat, voice chat, video chat, emails, blogs, and social media networks. JOTA-JOTI allows you to build friendships around the world and to find out more about scouting culture and scouting life.

Over 5 hours we had a steady trickle of about 20 young people (so 20% of our troop) visiting our OFCOM licensed radio station “GB6WSG” (Golf-Bravo-Six-Wargrave-Scout-Group) learning about and experiencing the wonders of Short Wave Radio. We made contact with JOTA Scout & Guide Groups from all over the UK in Huddersfield, Cornwall, Scotland, Kent, Sussex and London. Further afield contacts were made into Germany, Ireland and Russia. We particularly enjoyed working the Scout Association stations GB2BG (GB2-Bear-Grylls) in Cheshire and GB2GP (GB2-Gilwell-Park) in Essex.

Our young people were fascinated by the physics and technical aspects of Amateur Radio and they also practised sending their names and messages in morse code to each other. Beavers, Cubs and Scouts were able to send greetings messages and talk to other Scouts over the radio waves. The conversations were largely about the weather, exchanging names and general greetings, and information about what they like best about Scouting!

For the first time we also ran a JOTI (Jamboree On The Internet) station this was extremely easy to do and just involved a computer, a web browser and an Internet connection. We used ScoutLink, the IRC Chat that is set-up by WOSM and staffed out of Kuala Lumpur. ScoutLink is a leader moderated series of forums and chat rooms where Beavers, Cubs and Scouts log in and exchange text and voice messages. Conversations are typically simple – so your name, location, and anything else you want to chat about. There was also a networked Minecraft server that we logged into. Scouts shared and collected unique codes called a JamPuz (Jamboree Puzzle) ID. Ours was 5GB20E. Our young people had text chat conversations with Scouts and Guides in Namibia, Zambia, Canada, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines and India.

JOTA-JOTI brings together over 1 Million Scouts and Guides from 150 Countries. Its a great way of experiencing International Scouting. Our Beavers, Cubs and Scouts throughly enjoyed trying out something new, talking and chatting to fellow Scouts and making friends with other young people across the globe. In July, our Scouts had a fantastic time at the Finland International Jamboree, and JOTA-JOTI allowed us to provide an International Scouting experience to our Beavers and Cubs – from the comfort of our Scout HQ in Berkshire.