Around 50,000 people will travel to Gdańsk in the summer of 2027. Some Contingents will come by train or coach. Many others will fly, because from large parts of the world there is no other way to move a group of young people across a continent, on the right dates, within a budget. That journey will leave a mark on the planet, and no route erases it.
The road to the 26th World Scout Jamboree begins long before anyone reaches an airport or a station. It begins at home, in the places your Contingent already knows.
Scouts have always done one thing well. We leave places in better shape than we found them. That is what we are asking for now.
Offsetting the flights of a whole Contingent is not something a Scout group can promise, and we would rather not pretend otherwise. Something else is within reach of every Contingent, wherever you are travelling from. Before you leave for Poland, do something for the environment where you live. Put it on your road to the Jamboree, next to the fundraising and the training weekends.
Plant trees or care for a green space near your meeting place, and keep coming back to it after the planting day. Clean up a beach, a riverbank or a forest path. Create habitat for pollinators or nesting birds. Restore something damaged nearby, a wetland or a hedgerow.
Look at your own preparations too. Cut the waste your Contingent produces on the way to the Jamboree, from packaging to printed material. Run an environmental education activity for younger sections or for your local community, so the learning stays behind when you leave. Partner with an organisation already protecting nature where you live, and put your hands and your hours behind their plan.
Choose one action and finish it. One project your Contingent completes and maintains carries further than a long list of good intentions.
Everything you do at home travels with you. Tell your unit. Tell the Contingents camped next to you. Fifty thousand young people arriving with a finished environmental project behind them leaves a mark of a different kind.
We are crossing the world to meet in Gdańsk from 30 July to 8 August 2027. Let us take care of that world on the way, and arrive having left it a little better than we found it.

