More than 600 children, young people and leaders gathered from May 14 to 18, 2025 in Kampong Thom province, in central Cambodia, for a camporee that brought together, in a single event, Pathfinders and the children's ministry. The information was released by Adventist News Network (adventist.news), the official news agency of the Adventist Church.
Over five days, the program revolved around three pillars, according to the agency: discipleship, leadership development and character building. In practice, this translated into honor classes, interactive sessions and worship moments — the format any Pathfinder recognizes immediately, here replicated thousands of kilometers away, in a country where Adventists are a small minority.
The opening ceremony was led by two of the region's main leaders: Roger O. Caderma, president of the Adventist Church in the Southern Asia-Pacific Division (SSD), and Hang Dara, president of the Adventist Church in Cambodia (CAM).
What happened
Between May 14 and 18, 2025, Kampong Thom province hosted a Pathfinder and children's camporee that, according to Adventist News Network, gathered more than 600 participants among children, young people and leaders. It was five days of continuous programming.
The event was not only for Pathfinders. It brought together, in the same camp, the club and the children's ministry — which makes sense in a small field, where concentrating forces in a single gathering yields more than spreading separate events throughout the year. For the reader, it is like imagining a camporee that hosted, side by side, Pathfinders and Adventurers in the same program.
According to the division, the week was organized around discipleship, leadership development and character building. The activities cited by the agency included honor classes, interactive sessions and worship services — the same triad of practical instruction, fellowship and spirituality that sustains the Pathfinder program around the world.
What a camporee is
For anyone just arriving to the movement, an explanation is worthwhile. A camporee is the large camp that gathers several Pathfinder clubs in one place, for a few days, with intense programming: camp setup, honor classes, field activities, competitions, worship services and ceremonies.
It is where the year's learning gains scale. What the Pathfinder trained at the club's weekly meeting — knots, drill, first aid, outdoor life — appears there before hundreds or thousands of peers. And it is also one of the movement's strongest moments of identity: the Pathfinder realizes they are part of something much larger than their own club.
Camporees happen at various scales — club, region, conference, union, division. The one in Kampong Thom was a national gathering, bringing together the Pathfinders of an entire country, Cambodia, at a single point on the map.
Where the Southern Asia-Pacific Division is
The Adventist Church organizes its worldwide structure into divisions — large regional blocks. Cambodia belongs to the Southern Asia-Pacific Division, known by the English acronym SSD (Southern Asia-Pacific Division), headquartered in the Philippines. It is one of the church's most diverse regions, spanning countries of Southeast Asia.
For the sake of comparison, the Brazilian Pathfinder is in the South American Division (DSA), which brings together eight countries and is the cradle of the largest camporee in the world. The SSD is a quite different reality: in several of its countries, Adventists are a small minority, and work with children and young people takes place in a context of strong religious plurality.
It was the president of that division, Roger O. Caderma, who helped open the Cambodia camporee — a sign, the division pointed out, of the weight regional leadership gives to youth ministry in that part of the world.
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Cambodia is a majority-Buddhist country, in Southeast Asia, with a small and relatively young Adventist presence compared to countries where the movement has decades of roots. The Adventist Church in Cambodia is identified by the acronym CAM, and its president, Hang Dara, was at the forefront of the event's opening alongside the division leader.
Gathering more than 600 children, young people and leaders in a field of that size is not a modest number — it is significant. It shows that the Pathfinder program, born to shape children and adolescents in faith, in nature and in service, works as a growth tool also where the church is just beginning.
Here is the bridge with the Pathfinder reading this page: the uniform, the flag, the scarf, the honors and the worship around the campfire are practically the same in Kampong Thom and in any city. The language changes, the landscape changes, the size of the church changes — but the method and the purpose are shared. The Pathfinder is part of a network that crosses borders.
Discipleship, leadership and character
The division summed up the goal of the camporee in three words: discipleship, leadership development and character building. These are not loose terms — each one translates into concrete activities that took place at the camp.
Discipleship appeared in the worship services and spiritual sessions that marked the week. Leadership development is the heart of the Pathfinder program: it is the older children and adolescents who help lead the units, and the camporee is where that responsibility is exercised in practice. And character building runs through everything — from the discipline of setting up camp to teamwork in the honor classes.
The honor classes, incidentally, are one of the pillars cited by the agency. They teach specific skills — in areas such as nature, arts, health or handcrafts — and each one completed earns a badge. It is the same system the Pathfinder knows: learning by doing, with a concrete record of what has been mastered.
Why this news matters to you
News of distant camporees often goes unnoticed, but this one carries a lesson for the club. It shows that the model works at any scale — from a giant club in a major capital to an entire field that gathers 600 people on the other side of the planet.
It is also a reminder that being a Pathfinder means belonging to something worldwide. When you put on the uniform at the next camporee, it is worth remembering that, in May 2025, hundreds of Cambodian children made exactly the same gesture, sang, marched and earned honors under the same ideals.
To follow official news of the Adventist movement around the world, Adventist News Network (adventist.news) and Notícias Adventistas, in Brazil, are the primary sources. It was from the international agency that the information in this report came.