GLEN JEAN, W.Va. — “This place is massive.”
Assistant Scoutmaster Mark Ferrell says, even after a couple of days at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in Fayette County, he still cannot fully comprehend the size of the the host site for the National Boy Scout Jamboree.
“You can describe it to somebody. You can take a photograph of it. You can even fly over it with a movie camera,” said Ferrell. “But unless you stand there and see the thing for yourself, the scale of it is just, literally, indescribable.”
Hundreds of buses, loaded with Boy Scouts, rolled out of that Glen Jean site on Wednesday for the first of what will be five days of work with 350 community service projects in nine West Virginia counties.
About 10,000 volunteers will be working on each of the five days putting in a total of 300,000 community service hours in the following counties: Fayette, Greenbrier, McDowell, Mercer, Monroe, Nicholas, Raleigh, Summers and Wyoming.
The Citizens Conservation Corps of West Virginia helped organize, what officials call, the single largest community service initiative project of its kind in U.S. history.
Group COO Jennifer Douglas said preparations for the arrival of the Boy Scouts started 24 months ago. “We actually went into those communities and surveyed and asked those communities, ‘What do you need done?'”
Each of the projects is different. “They’re working at different schools doing playgrounds, groundskeeping, trail building, trail maintenance. We’re working with different city parks,” said Douglas.
“The hope is that, when they work on these projects, they can see the impact in the community, what it really means for the citizens and, hopefully, they’ll come back.”
Ferrell said the tradition of Scouting sticks. He was an Eagle Scout and started volunteering with the organization when his own son became a Boy Scout. His son’s troop is part of the Buckskin Council, the host council for this year’s Jamboree.
“This is a global experience,” he said. “There are Scouts here from everywhere .”
Ferrell and Martin were guests on Wednesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
The National Boy Scout Jamboree continues through next Wednesday. The Summit Bechtel Reserve will be the permanent home for the event that is held every four years.