Permanent On-Line World Jamboree

If you haven’t visited Scout.org (the website of The World Organization of the Scouting Movement, WOSM) in a while you are in for a big surprise!

For the last ten months we have been reviewing and analysing feedback from our readers, which resulted in the developing of an innovative concept for our Movement’s web presence”, recalls Srinath Tirumale, from WOSM’s World Scout Bureau in Geneva, who co-leads the core team responsible for this relaunch, “and today, a radically new website saw the day.

We are offering open, easily accessible on-line space 24 hours per day, seven days per week and 365 days per year. Our national Member Organisations and their youth members can showcase the richness of diversity our Scout Movement is known for. Stories of past activities, current projects and future events can be shared by Scouts directly involved: everyone is a user and everyone is a contributor, everyone can reach out to 40 million other Scouts around the world !

A user-generated interface is at the centre of the new scout.org, with members of our Movement from all levels – local, regional and global, as well as volunteers and staff – providing stories, images, videos or any other piece of communication they want to share with others. Just like at a real World Scout Jamboree. But potentially with some 40 million participating Scouts, instead with only some 40000 lucky ones attending the Jamboree in Sweden in 2011.

Scott Teare, Secretary general of WOSM, introduces the new website in this brief video;

The front page of Scout.org is now a social media matrix accessible to Scouts from all over the world! You do get the feeling of hitting the ground at a World Jamboree and meeting fellow Scouts and Scouters. Here’s a very small sampling of pictures that Scouts have posted: