The Event Services Directorate is big, "there's 200 in Subcamps alone!", says Rachel Kemp, "and it also includes, International, Registration, Learning & Development, Staff, and the Info Desk". Before the event Rachel also took the lead on the Website and Newsletters.
Rachel started in Guides in the 5th Chantry Guides in Billericay. Too young to attend EIJ as a participant in 1984, she did get to visit. By 1988 she was able to come as a participant, and has been coming back in one role or another ever since.
Rachel comes from good Guiding stock, "People may have heard of my mum, Stella Watts,", she says "she was a Subcamp leader at previous events". Soon Rachel became a Subcamp leader in her own right. "I was a Subcamp leader of Urang Utan in the last EIJ in Kirby-le" she says, "and then Sydney in 2012.".
By 2016 she was Head of Subcamps. For 2020 she was appointed Director of Event Services and retained it this time around.
Back home, Rachel is a freelance marketing consultant, with a background in telecoms. Her current focus is on infrastructure. She has a husband, and three sons, two of whom she hopes to see on Monday. Her Guides, all 33 of them, are also attending EIJ, and with the other "amazing leaders they have, they've had the best time ever.".
When asked about how working on such a big event has affected her c.v., Rachel laughs: "It's more about the person it's made me." "Without Guiding and Scouting, and the influence it hod on my mum, I wouldn't be the person I am."
Rachel is "really proud" of the difference she made, both "on young women", "and on the world". As a note to her eventual successor: "Use what we have now, but develop it and improve it. There always could be a better way, so come and put your own mark on it!"
