GLEN JEAN, W.Va. — It has been Less than a week since the National Boy Scout Jamboree came to a close in Fayette County and already planning is underway for the next Jamboree.
Jamboree Director Larry Pritchard said they are currently conducting a detailed evaluation process to get feedback from those involved.
“The youth participants, the leaders with the contingent, the volunteer staff, the professional staff, engineers partners, everyone,” said Pritchard. “You know, tell us what you saw that was great, what you saw that needed a lot of improvement so that we can do things better next time.”
Once the process is completed, they will then use that information to better plan the next Jamboree slated for 2017. But in the meantime, Pritchard said they do have an idea of some areas that may need adjustments.
“Maybe we can have a more relaxed program schedule,” he said. “We wanted kids to do everything and they self regulate, they do what they want to do, but we can work together with them for that.”
Pritchard also mentioned how they could maybe expand more with partnerships regarding activities for the event. On top of that, he mentions that their dealings with visitors could be improved upon as well.
But at this point, most of the changes seem to be minor ones, according to Pritchard. On the flip-side of things, there were many areas that exceeded their expectations, for instance the Day of Service.
“We had some leaders when they were coming saying they didn’t want to take the kids off the camp for a whole day, well they got to meet some West Virginians and got to do something they felt good about,” said Pritchard.
Over the nine day event, Boy Scouts went into nine counties in southern West Virginia and worked around 300,000 hours of community service in local communities. It was the largest community service effort of it’s kind in the nation.
Pritchard said Scouts came back saying they were glad they did it and liked the people they met. He said they will plan to do the Day of Service next time and called it a good lesson learned this time around.
The 2013 Jamboree also had a number of new things in it that were not seen in Jamborees of the past. One of those involved a new lunch system, which Pritchard said he was nervous about.
“Changing our whole food delivery system to the Scouts was a big change, a huge risk for us and it turned out okay,” he said.
All in all, Pritchard said he was satisfied with how the Jamboree went and looks forward to hearing feedback from Scouts in the near future.
In the mean time, cleanup continues at the Summit Bechtel Reserve following the Jamboree, and is expected to continue through the month of August.