SMSGlobal partners with Scouts Victoria

SMSGlobal is excited to announce its support and involvement with Scouts Victoria and their major events team.

This year the focus was on 7-10-year-old Cubs, celebrating 100 years of Cub Scouts. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, the event was labeled 'Babloo's Picnic' and took place at the Royal Park, right next door to the Melbourne Zoo. Over 5500 Cubs, leaders, families and friends attended the even taking part in the fun and festivities.

There was also a very special global presence with roughly 100 Scouts from around the world, including the King of Sweden (who was in town to celebrate the 69th World Scout Foundation’s Fellowship) in attendance.

Before the fun took place, a simultaneous investiture ceremony was held to welcome new and old members to higher honours and ranks. The exciting part, especially for us, was that it was all done via SMS – with leaders being instructed when to start their ceremony via text message. Event organisers were able to coordinate a ceremony of thousands of people all with the simple click of a button.

“SMSGlobal were a huge help for our event. Thanks to them we were able to coordinate our 5000 attendees, and seeing them all stand to run their simultaneous opening ceremonies upon receiving their ‘time to start’ text message was a great moment. Thank you for your help!”.

Annie Asquith from Scouts Australia

But the use of SMS did not stop there. In typical Scouts fashion, the event was action-packed with fun and excitement, as Cubs and leaders divided into packs and set out to participate in a variety of activities including; rock climbing, geo-caching, bike riding, orienteering, kite flying and more.

As each pack of Scouts set out on their own adventure, leaders were contacted via SMS to notify them when to move on to their next activity. Once again with such a large group of participants involved, and coordination being such a difficult process, the importance of instant communication between leaders and Scout members was vital to the success of the event.

“The addition of SMS allowed us to communicate with all of our leaders without use of a sound system, which would have required far more infrastructure than we would have been able to bring into the park, especially as the activities were being held over a very large space. It also allowed us to inform the leaders of changes as they took place, such as when we had to move a group photo from one end of the lawn to another (a couple of minutes walk away) with only a few minutes’ notice”.

Overall a fantastic event and one we are certainly proud to be a supporter of. We look forwards to next years event and a new group of Scouts.