Jota / Joti Luton Oct 2018

I was helping the whole weekend with JOTA/JOTI, I was the only explorer/young leader helping and I was the one in charge of the JOTI and we had a lot of different countries talking to us.
It was a great experience and every group seem really happy that they got this opportunity to talk to different people from around the world. I wanted to thanks Janet and Nick for the amazing food and drinks.
I just wanted to show one of the conversations I had with someone from Australia and said that her favourite thing about scouting is the friends that turn into family and I agree with her and she also told me they had a page where they post their meetings and events, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the page’s name.
Article written by Rafaela Olivera

Hello my name is Hamnah and this is my write up for today’s event. I’m from Beech Hill Scout group and I came to the JOTI/JOTA to communicate with other scouts via the radio and also computer devices. We had a lovely time communicating with other scout groups and this opportunity allowed many of us to understand how the Air (JOTA) works.

There were many operators who were here to help us all to have a good time and answer any doubts or questions we had. We began the day by coming into the so-called “Shack” and were given a short briefing about today’s event. We were given a worksheet to plan a short message we would say on air after on today. We were instructed to say our name to start off with and then slowly begin spelling our name but not spelling them in the ordinary way. We memorised the phonetics of our first name and the receiver on the other side was able to understand clearly how to spell our name and said it correctly. This made us very pleased as we were able to communicate with people from miles away without having to keep saying “sorry what did you say?” or “can you repeat that for me?”

We also then learned about other countries’ JID which was their code for their country. We learnt that EA was for Spain and GJ was for a place called Jersey, a small island. Using the laptops then we joined a live global chat room were we were able to text different people and even private chat with them and learn about their hobbies or interests. We even told a few jokes too!

Overall, this is a very extraordinary event. I have never done this at school and that’s what scouting is about. To get all those opportunities that school doesn’t give you. I want to thank all the adults and explorers who helped makes today’s JOTA/JOTI possible. I also thank those people all around the world who took time out to listen to us talk on Air and give us feedback.
Thank you all!
Hamnah Baig – Beech Hill Scout group