Jamboree DEI merchandise is for sale—and it's historic
Patches and neckerchiefs for the national event proudly commemorate the three community spaces on offer.
This summer’s National Jamboree is rapidly approaching, which means it’s almost time for everyone’s favorite part of Scouting events: The patches.
Anyone who’s been to a Jamboree—or heck, even a local camporee—has seen the fierce patch-trading market that sprouts up at these gatherings. And this year, the merch-obsessed have one more reason to be excited: A historic set of patches related to the diversity, equity and inclusion programming at the Jamboree.
As I reported a few weeks ago, the 2023 Jamboree will include an intentional focus on DEI, which is itself a milestone for the BSA: It’s the first time a Jamboree will host official community spaces for scouts of color, women in scouting and LGBTQ+ and allied scouts.
And each of those community spaces comes with some official swag to match. You can view the whole collection on the Jamboree trading post page. There are shirts, quarter-zips, hats, neckerchiefs and, of course, patches.
You need not be a Jamboree attendee to buy the merch; anyone can purchase and wear these items on their uniform. And it’s worth mentioning: This is also the first time that the BSA has authorized the production of an LGBTQ+ rainbow patch that is fully approved for uniform wear.
Dwayne Fontenette, Jr., who is leading the Jamboree’s DEI team, advises scouters to get their orders in ASAP to guarantee availability. Proceeds from these merchandise sales go directly to supporting the DEI programming at the event.
And if you missed my interview with Fontenette—which includes all the details about what the Jamboree community spaces will look like—you can read it here.
This is great stuff. I shared the news about Dwayne’s amazing initiative with my work colleagues and just bought LGBTQ+ and Allied Scouts patches for 40 of them! Can’t wait to present them!
This is a wonderful step forward. I had a pretty bad experience last year after taking our troop to a baseball game that turned out to be Pride Night (in August, not June). No one complained that night, but a month later my wife and I were ambushed in the troop committee meeting by parents who were upset at participating in pride night. That “participation” consisted of standing up for the national anthem, which was sung by a drag queen, because we were upstairs in a suite with our own food and drinks, and that’s we’re not down amongst all of the pride related booths that were set up on the concourse.
We pushed back hard, of course, noting BSA’a continuing growth on DEI, including the required merit badge. I also noted that none of the scouts had done anything to participate directly in the events of that night.
It almost led me to quit the troop but I’m sticking with it. Our community is pretty conservative. Our troop is made up mostly of military retirees (including myself.), and our sponsoring organization is a Catholic church, but I’ve also noticed that the boys don’t have these issues with either DEI or LGBTQIA+ more specifically . It is only their parents.