After countless hours of hard work and mountains of bottles to sort, Jonathan Schaub from Plamondon will be going to the 22nd World Scout Jamboree in Sweden with 38,000 other scouts from around the world.
Schaub applied for the international scout camp on his own initiative and had to fundraise every penny for the $5,000 trip, no small task for a 14-year-old. His efforts have paid off – Scout group commissioner Linda Johnson said that Schaub will be the first Scout from the Lac La Biche area to ever attend this international scout camp.
“It’s pretty cool,” Schaub said, who did the interview in true Scout fashion: from a remote island brush-camp on a borrowed cellphone. “I’ve never been out of the country, so it’ll be a great experience.”
Johnson has known Schaub since he started in Beavers when he was six years old. She said she watched him grow from a young boy who could only speak French – his father Norman had to translate so that he could understand the activities – into a dedicated Scout who earned the highest possible award available from Scouts Canada.
“He’s been a very serious and dedicated participant,” Johnson said. “He achieved his Chief Scout’s Award, which isn’t easy to do. It’s actually serious enough that the Governor General of Canada actually signs their certificate.”
She said that earning the Chief Scout’s Award gave Jonathan the confidence to apply for the World Scout Jamboree, an international gathering of scouts from July 27th to August 8th in southern Sweden.
“When he decides to do something, he works hard to achieve it,” said Julie Arsenault-Schaub, Jonathan’s mother. “So when he decided that he wanted to go I knew that it was real and that he would work for it. And I’m proud of him for that, I’m really proud of him.”
And work he did.
Schaub, who is in the 14 to 17-year-old Venturer Scout age-group, had to sort through a whole hockey season’s worth of bottles from the Plamondon arena – $1,000 worth of empties.
“Can you imagine, over a thousand dollars in bottles how big of a truck you need?” Arsenault-Schaub said. “The truck was full and a long trailer was full of bottles too. Bags and bags and bags, it was unbelievable. I’ve never seen that many bottles!”
He also sold popcorn at movie night concessions, mowed lawns, and found local businesses to sponsor him.
And Schaub not only had to raise $5,000. There were presentations to prepare, letters to write, and he had to ace an interview with the executive director of Scouting in Edmonton. All in all, a lot of work to prove that he belongs with the top scouts from around the world.
“It’s a unique experience,” he said. “Everyone only gets one chance to go to the World Jamboree, because the way it works you have to be between 14 and 18, and it only happens every four years. So I didn’t want to miss my chance.”
Schaub said that the organizers haven’t told him too much of what to expect in Sweden, because they want to keep it a surprise. However, Schaub does know that he’ll be flying out on July 22nd and visiting Frankfurt, Germany with 300 other Canadian Scouts before making his way to the huge camp site in Rinkaby, Sweden.
There, the Scouts are divided into groups that camp and cook together, participate in hundreds of different activities, and have the opportunity to meet other young people from around the world.
And Schaub still has four years as a Venturer left. He said he plans to get his Queen’s Venturer Award, the highest award a Venturer can earn, and is excited for the trip that his whole group is taking to Europe next year.
“The Scouts for us has been a journey,” Arsenault-Schaub said. “It’s been amazing. I never expected that it would come to this big deal.”
