Translator: Liene Kiršfelde Reviewer: Carl Luc Campbell
I am not here to reveal any groundbreaking research,
or tell you a way to save the climate.
I haven't swum from Cuba to Florida
or invented a camera that takes pictures faster than light.
I am just a scout.
I am a scout in a uniform.
And what I am going to tell you is why I am a member
of one of the broadest movements in the world,
why millions of people around the world voluntarily wear a uniform like this,
and meet up across age, job positions, and political beliefs to do scouting.
We are approximately 40 million scouts around the world.
That is five times the population of New York.
My boyfriend got a little surprised
when I told him that I had kids.
But that was nothing compared to when I told him that I had 24.
(Laughter)
I would like to introduce you to some of my kids.
(Applause)
Thank you.
We meet two hours every Wednesday and do something together.
We make fire, we play games, we go for experiences somewhere
or what else we believe would be fun doing.
These children experience many adults coming and going in their lives.
In school, they change teachers at least twice,
and 40% of them experience
their parents getting divorced and maybe even finding new partners.
I've been their scout leader for three years now,
since they were this tall,
and I plan on staying until they grow this tall.
That makes me
one of the most stable connections in their daily lives.
They know I am there every Wednesday.
And it gives me a possibility
to bring in some continuity to the work I do with them.
So, why do I spend two hours every Wednesday,
year after year, making activities with other people's children?
It's because I want to make these children the most awesome adults of the future.
I want them to have...
(Applause)
I want them to have self-esteem.
I want them to grow up and be proud of who they are,
I want them to take care of each other,
to be able to spent some of their extra energy
on those who need it,
and I want them to appreciate and be grateful for the world we live in.
To me, that is an awesome adult,
and that is why I am a scout.
Children, nowadays, are met by expectations and demands
almost everywhere they go.
They are expected to have unique abilities,
or to get certain grades, or look a certain way.
In scouting, you don't need to have any specific ability.
But I do expect something.
I expect my kids
to play along, and to behave, and to be nice to each other.
And everybody can do that
without any specific ability.
Sometimes, they just need a little guidance.
This is Mads.
I met Mads the first time when he was seven,
and he was quite a handful.
When we tried to gather the children, he ran away;
when we tired to explain the rules of a game,
he was busy hitting the person next to him.
You probably know this kind of boys.
They don't have great success in school,
because schools want you to sit down, and listen, and concentrate.
The only way Mads thought he could get attention
was to destroy something, break the rules, or to tease someone,
because everywhere he went,
he couldn't live up to people's expectations.
It took us some years and many deep breaths,
but in the end, Mads found out
that we didn't have any other demands from him
than being who he was.
We believed in him.
And he found out that he was good at something.
For instance, he was a world champ making a fire.
And I believe that all this gave him some self-esteem,
and it gave him a space where he could become a success.
Mads stopped doing scouting when he was 16,
and I met him in church, on Christmas Eve, some years ago.
And I asked him how he was doing,
and I couldn't believe what he told me.
He was doing an apprenticeship as a carpenter.
If someone had asked me about his future when he was seven,
I wouldn't have dared to hope for him to get an education.
But now he is.
And it's great.
I have heard that he's still souping his moped to drive faster.
But I guess we can handle that.
I believe that it is important to the well-being of our society
to have a space where being an awesome child and an awesome adult
is the most important thing.
And don't get me wrong,
I don't think it is bad
being good at something, or to have abilities or skills,
but the most important thing is to be awesome.
Whenever I meet new people and tell them I'm a scout,
they first react by getting a little surprised,
and then, they get a little suspicious,
because, I mean,
how can I, as an adult, be a scout without being a little bit of a nerd?
Then the conversation continues, as they remember
that they did scouting too, in their childhood,
and they begin to tell stories about back then.
In this kind of conversations, I rarely get to the point
where I can tell them why I am a scout.
Today was my chance to tell you why I am a scout.
It's because we want to make children the most awesome adults of the future.
So watch out for the scouts!
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)