HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CUB SCOUTING

Yes, this year the Boy Scouts of America has two benchmarks to celebrate, the 95TH anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America and the 75th Anniversary of the Cub Scouting program. May bells ring out at this year’s Blue and Gold Banquets and troop Courts of Honor in honor of America’s great youth organization and America’s largest program in Scouting reaching these significant benchmarks.

Scouting uses as its benchmark the national charter being awarded being awarded February 14, 1910. This has always been celebrated as Scout Week in Scouting.

The Cub Scout program grew out of younger youth tagging along with bigger brothers to Scout meetings, campouts and events. The English had started a wolf cub program soon after Scouting was started, but the slow to adapt Boy Scouts of America waited until 1930. The Cub Scout program was an immediate hit with the youngsters and packs began everywhere. It was not long until the Cub Scout membership out numbered Boy Scout membership in the Boy Scouts of America.

The oldest older youth program is the Sea Scouts. They began in 1912 and have been a small and very active program since their beginning. National council, regional, and local council Sea Scout regatta are still attracting a co-ed group of young adults who are working on their Quartermaster Award which is the equivalent to the Eagle Scout Award.

In 2007, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the world Scouting movement by Lord Baden-Powell. In 1907 Baden-Powell gathered up youth from all walks of life and had Scouting’s first campout on Brown Sea Island just off the southern English coast. In 2010, Scouts from all over the world will gather in England for the World Jamboree to celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of Scouting.