“I convey my warm greetings to all those attending the 24th World Scout Jamboree,” President Andrzej Duda said in a message.
Citing his own experience as a scout, he added that he carried the spirit of scouting in his heart.
Duda said, as quoted on his website in English: “As President of the Republic of Poland, but also as a former scout, who always has at his heart the scouting idea and the scouting law, for as it is rightly said: ‘once a scout, always a scout.’”
The president also said that he was delighted that the Polish scouting community was strongly represented at the jamboree in America.
He added that “scouting is a perfect school of character and cooperation” and that “scouts bear testimony to the values of fundamental importance to our national community and the entire mankind: solidarity and fraternity, freedom and patriotism.”
Duda invited “all scouts to visit Poland,” where he said “the beautiful Sobieszewska Island, in the vicinity of Gdańsk, will be the venue of the European Scout Jamboree” in one year’s time.
The World Scout Jamboree is an educational event that brings together young people from around the world to promote peace and mutual understanding and to develop leadership and life skills, according to the organisers.
The 24th World Scout Jamboree is being held at the Summit Bechtel Reserve, a scouting and adventure centre in the wilds of West Virginia from July 22 to August 2.
The Polish president has previously praised his country's scouting organisations for helping instill patriotism as well as for their historic role in the nation recovering its independence in 1918 after more than a century of foreign rule.
(gs)
Source: president.pl, www.2019wsj.org