Chiayi Rover Scout Camp First Invites Japanese Scouts for International Exchange

The 2026 National High School Rover Scout Exploration Camp, held in Chiayi, Taiwan, has broadened the scope of traditional scouting activities by incorporating career exploration and international exchange.

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This year's event is organized by National Hsinchu Commercial Vocational High School, and the courses combine Chiayi's local characteristics and the school's professional courses. We hope that students can accumulate different abilities through practical challenges and operations, and explore their interests and future career directions through the activities.

This year's event, organized by the Ministry of Education's National Academy for Educational Research and hosted by National Hsinchu Commercial Vocational High School, brought together over 100 Rover Scouts from across Taiwan. For the first time, scouts from Ehime Prefecture, Japan, participated, fostering cross-cultural learning and collaboration.

The camp moved beyond typical outdoor survival skills, offering participants hands-on experience in fields such as pottery, computer graphics, creative photography, English translation, and copywriting. These activities were linked with specialized badge examinations, connecting scouting skills with diverse career pathways.

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Unlike the general impression of scouting activities, this time professional skills for vocational high schools are brought into scouting education. Students can actually engage in artistic pottery production, computer graphics, creative photography, English translation, and copywriting, and combine various specialized badge examinations, so that scouting skills and diverse career exploration are interconnected.

Local culture was integrated through excursions to the Chiayi Railway Art Village and exploring the historical significance of the KANO baseball team. This approach allowed students to complete exploration tasks while learning about Chiayi's heritage.

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Scouting education is an important field for character education and competency-oriented learning. It is not just about learning individual skills, but about cultivating students' self-exploration, diverse intelligence, and teamwork abilities through experience and practice.

Ministry official Zhan Ya-hui emphasized that scouting education is a vital platform for character development and competency-based learning. She highlighted the program's focus on cultivating students' self-exploration, diverse intelligence, and teamwork abilities through experiential learning, travel, and service.

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We hope that students can cultivate core competencies such as morality, physical and mental health, and mutual assistance through the process of learning, traveling, and serving, and also increase opportunities to understand their own interests and abilities through practical experience of different job functions.