HOLDING A COUNCIL-RUN WEEKLONG INTERNATIONAL CAMP

Since 1997, when the Chief Okemos Council first held a Michigan International Camporee (MIC), it has become the largest council-run multinational Scouting event in North America.Once every four years, approximately 200 Scouts and Venturers and 50 leaders from Michigan troops and crews and 100 Scouts and Venturers and 25 leaders from troops and crews in other states and Canada are joined by approximately 200 Scouts (both boys and girls) and 50 leaders from upto 25 other countries in an eight-day miniature world jamboree.Adding staff members, there are over 300 participants from outside the U.S. and Canada at an MIC.

Michigan troops and crews make a two-week commitment to an MIC.The first week, they provide home stays for one or more international contingents with the same total number of Scouts, Venturers, and leaders that they are sending to MIC.Then the next week at MIC, their Scouts, Venturers and leaders become part of a campsite troop with the same international Scouts and leaders they hosted in their homes.This opportunity to camp as part of an international troop and an international patrol is not even available at a world jamboree.

MIC host units meet their international contingents at either Detroit Metro Airport or a Michigan bus or train station.They organize host families for their guest Scouts and leaders from their unit and their community following BSA Youth Protection Guidelines.During the home stay week there are two activities that all MIC international contingents and their host units participate in:a day at Lake Lansing Park in Haslett, Michigan, with opportunities for swimming, sailing, team games, picnics during the day, and performances by international contingents in the park band shell in the evening;and a day at Cedar Point amusement park.Host units also plan unit-organized activities for their guests, but they make sure to allow room for individual time with host families and visits to the mall, etc.

There is no badge work at an MIC.Instead, the international troops and international patrols interact through activities such asswimming, boating, raft building, .22 rifle, air rifle, shotgun and black powder shooting, archery, target paintball, team games, initiative games, geocaching, handicraft, Native American crafts, service to Northwoods by removing invasive plant species, and a Global Scouting program area where staff members from other countries lead activities representative of their countries.MIC evening activities vary from inter-troop campfires to arena shows in the Northwoods campfire amphitheater.An MIC is a closed camp except for Saturday’s International Festival Day and Visitors Day where MIC participants and visitors have the opportunity to learn about the countries of our guests, sample their food, and see their performances.Because a Saturday is the best day for a Visitors Day, an MIC begins on a Sunday afternoon and ends the following Sunday morning to ensure that a Saturday is included.

International contingents and IST members are attracted to an MIC in several ways.

  • EXPERIENCE AT PAST MICS - Most of the international contingents at MIC 2012 are from Scout groups that participated in past MICs.Their Scouts had such a good time that their leaders want a new group of Scouts to have that experience.
  • WORD-OF-MOUTH AT JAMBOREES AND OTHER ACTIVITIES - Michigan MIC leaders and leaders of MIC contingents from other countries tell others they meet at jamborees about MIC.
  • THE WEB - International Department BSA arranges for MIC to be included in the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM)’s Scouting Events Database on their year’s MIC is the only 2012 event in North America listed in that database.There is a link from that database to MIC’s website ( which contains photos and descriptions from past MICs and online unit and staff application forms.

International Scouting protocol requires that all international contingent adult leadership and all IST members be approved by their country’s National Scout Organization.International Department BSA requests and receives that approval for MIC.This is an essential part of the process to screen out non-Scout groups and Scout groups that are not part of WOSM-affiliated Scout associations.

An MIC requires a major commitment of time and effort from a number of volunteers, but it rewards those involved by providing mountain-top experiences to Michigan Scouts and Venturers as well asScouts and leaders from other countries and creating international friendships that will last a lifetime

SOME SUGGESTIONS TO OTHER COUNCILS CONSIDERING RUNNING AN EVENT LIKE THIS:

I. ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS - In my opinion, there are three essential requirements for a successful council-run weeklong international camp.I call them the three C's, contacts, commitment, and a camp.

CONTACTS - You must have good international contacts.To recruit international contingents to our first Michigan International Camporee, I started with Scout groups in other countries that my troop had visited andthose who were interested in return visits to Michigan.A very good friend had chaired the last four Connecticut International Camporees, but his council was not planning to continue that event, sohe gave me their international contact list.Those two lists, plus contacts I had made at past world jamborees, gave us a solid nucleus of international contingents.Once we had a reasonable number of international commitments from those sources, we created a website showing the international contingents that were planning to come to our event and we asked International Department BSA to request that our event be listed in the Scouting Events Database at number of countries that were already planning to participate made our event more attractive for contingents from other countries.Every time I participate in an international Scouting event, I make a special effort to increase my list of international contacts and to add new countries to that list.Between returning contingents and my international contacts, by the time we went public with websites for MIC 2008 and MIC 2012 and we asked International Department BSA to request they be listed in the Scouting Events Database, we had already filled a majority of our spaces for international contingents.

The assistance and support of International Department BSA is essential in running a weeklong international camp.They have always been very helpful to us.It is also useful to develop a good relationship with the office of your U.S. Representative or one of your U.S. Senators in supporting the applications of your international contingents for U.S. visas.The office of the U.S. consul in each country makes the decisions about granting visas, but a letter from your Senator or Representative is often very helpful.

COMMITMENT - To make an event like this happenyou need an enthusiastic commitment to your event from key volunteers with a variety of different skills, from your council’s unit leaders, executive board, and professional staff.We have been extremely fortunate to have a number of highly qualified volunteers from Chief Okemos and neighboring councils take on important leadership roles in MIC administration, physical arrangements, program, and troop operations.Without the committed qualified volunteers who take on these roles, we would not have succeeded.

CAMP - The ideal location for a weeklong international camp is your council’s Boy Scout summer camp.However, because summer school vacations in other northern hemisphere countries are much shorter than they are in the U.S., there is a narrow range of possible dates when you can hold an international camp like an MIC and attract the maximum number of international contingents.In some countries, schools are still open during the week that contains July 4.In other countries, schools reopen the first full week of August. That means it is best to schedule an event like the MIC in the period that begins no sooner than the second week of July and ends no later than the first week of August.If you move your dates any earlier or later, you start limiting the international contingents that can participate. (If we move the dates any later in Michigan, we also start limiting local Scout and Venturer participation because of band camps and sports camps.)The problem is that those weeks are prime Boy Scout summer camp weeks, which your council is not likely to be interested in sacrificing for a weeklong international camp.We are fortunate that the Chief Okemos Council is a relatively small council and runs five weeks of Boy Scout summer camp.That has allowed us to take over our council’s summer camp for MIC the week after regular Boy Scout summer camp ends, and still fit within this window.MIC was moved one week earlier in 2012 because NOAC at Michigan State University is taking place during our traditional MIC week, and Boy Scout summer camp was shortened by one week.Councils that run more than one Boy Scout summer camp might have more flexibility, but, for a number of councils, finding a location for a weeklong international camp in this early July to early August time period would be a problem.

II. DECISIONS ABOUT CAMP STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION - There are at least six basic decisions that need to be made about an international camp like MIC.The way your council makes each decision will depend on your local situation.

1. Who will you accept as youth participants?(What will be the age range?Will you allow coed contingents?)

Our MIC age range for youth participants is at least 12 years old,or at least 11 1/2 years old and have completed the 6th grade, and not yet 18 years old.In contrast, the Santa Clara County Council has an older age range for their International Rendezvous.I strongly recommend that your age range should be the same for international contingentsas it is for U.S. contingents, and that you enforce this age range.Also note that if you don't invite coed contingents to an international camp, you are definitely setting yourself up for failure.

2. In recruiting participants from your local council and neighboring councils, are you going to recruit entire troops and crews or individual Scouts, Venturers, and unit leaders?Are you going to recruit participants from other parts of the U.S.?

For the MIC, we recruit host troops and crews.Scouts and Venturers can only participate as part of a host unit.Santa Clara County Council recruits individual Scouts, Venturers, and unit leaders for their International Rendezvous.Either option is possible.We make a limited number of spaces at an MIC available to patrols of Scouts and Venturers from other parts of the U.S. and from Canada.

3. Are you going to use your council’s Boy Scout summer camp staff or are you going to rely on an all volunteer staff?

A typical MIC has approximately 140 staff members from the BSA and 60 International Service Team (IST) members from other countries.Our IST members add significantly to the international experience of an MIC.

An MIC is planned and organized by a committee of volunteers and is staffed entirely by volunteers, who each pay a staff fee to cover the direct costs of food and camporee identity items.(The one exception is Boy Scout summer camp staff members who are fulltime high school or college students and stay an extra week to staff MIC.They are not paid to serve on the MIC staff, but they do not have to pay the staff fee.)In selecting our MIC staff, we make sure all BSA and state of Michigan standards are met.Using a volunteer staff that pays staff fees has allowed us to save money in our staff budget that we thenused to subsidize international participation.

4. Will you charge the international Scouts the same fee as your local Scouts, a higher fee, or a lower fee?

When we began planning our first Michigan International Camporee, we decided that, because the goal of our camporee is to enable our Scouts and Venturers to meet Scouts from around the world, we would encourage international contingents to come by charging them a significantly lower price than we charge local Scouts.International contingents have much higher transportation costs than local Scouts and the members of many contingents have to pay $140 each to apply for U.S. visas.Therefore we decided to include a camporee fee subsidy to these international Scouts as an MIC budget entry.We ended up with the following fee structure for the 1997 MIC that we have used ever since:

A. $0 (free) - One patrol of up to eightScouts, ages 12 through 17, and twoadults from any WOSM member country outside the U.S. and Canada is invited to participate in the Michigan International Camporee with no camp fee.We provide them with tents, food, and camp identity items like the patch, neckerchief, slide, and program booklet.We also provide home stays for them with Michigan area troops and crews the week before the camporee.This is our way of letting them know that we really want them to come.They are responsible for their transportation to and from Michigan, for their passport and visa fees, and for admission costs during home stay week, but there is no camp fee.

B. A fee that covers direct costs like food and camporee identity items - $100 per person for MIC 2012if they take advantage of the early payment discount.This is the fee we charge all camporee staff members, all U.S. and Canadian unit leaders, and members of a second patrol of up to eightScouts, ages 12 through 17, and twoadults from any international contingent.This option is only available for a Scout group that has participated in a past MIC.To enable us to have space for as many countries as possible, we have established two patrols as the maximum allowable MIC contingent from any country.

C. A fee for all U.S. and Canadian youth participants that allows our total revenue to more than cover our total cost - $250 per person in 2012if they take advantage of the early payment discount.All youth participants must be part of unit, district, or council contingents.We do not accept individual youth participants.

5. How frequently will you hold your event?

For many years, the Santa Clara County Council held an International Rendezvous every other year.We have held Michigan International Camporees once every four years.I believe there are three definite advantages to holding an international camp like this once every four years:

  1. This schedule allows your key volunteers to rest and do other things for a couple of years before you begin intensive work on the next international camp.
  2. It is much more likely thata leaderwho brings a contingent from another country to your international camp will return with a new contingent to your next international camp if there is a four year gap between camps instead of two.
  3. It makes the event even more special for local Scouts and Venturers as they look forward to the next gathering.

6. Will you do a home stay week?If you do, will it be before or after the week of your camp?

I believe a home stay week is an important part of the MIC experience, both for our international guests and for the host families.Our MIC home stay week has always been the week before the camp.With the way we organize the campsite troop, we feel that works best for us.Santa Clara County Council holds their High Sierra International Rendezvous home stay week the week after the camp, so both ways are possible options for you.

III. MAKE SURE THAT INTERNATIONAL CONTINGENT LEADERS AND IST UNDERSTAND AND AGREE TO FOLLOW BOTH STATE LAWS AND BSA RULES

1. ALCOHOL - In most countries the drinking age is lower than it is in the U.S.In a number of countries, 18- to 20-year-olds gather at a pub after a Scout meeting.It is important that international contingent leaders and IST understand the laws and practices here.We state on our MIC website: “Beer and other alcoholic beverages are prohibited in Boy Scouts of America Scout camps such as Northwoods Scout Reservation, the site of the Michigan International Camporee. All camporee participants, adults as well as youth, will be required to follow that rule. Furthermore, the minimum legal age for drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages in Michigan is 21. All camporee participants who are under the age of 21 will be required to make a commitment to obey that law during the entire time they are in Michigan. This includes their home stay week as well as the week of the international camporee. We realize that customs are different in other countries and many camporee participants who are of legal drinking age in their home country would like to participate in the same activities that they do at home. However, the ultimate responsibility for all our guest Scouts and leaders lies with the Chief Okemos Council and the Boy Scouts of America, and a situation in which police would discover underage drinking among participants in next summer's camporee, with the resulting publicity, could jeopardize similar events in the future.”