Every Child Should Be A Scout At Least Once In Their Life

It’s dark. I’m in the middle of the forest and I hear something in the bushes. Usually, I would jump out of my skin, but this time I just smiled and started making an attack plan in my head. I’m not scared because I’ve been a scout for about 3 years. I have scouted out every bush and been on guard in the middle of the night. I know that when I make an owl sound my patrol will come right away to help me in any danger. Hi, my name is Benus and today I will tell you why every child should be a scout at least once in their life.

One has to wonder, how Indonesia has 17 million scouts or how some of the most influential people like Neil Armstrong, John Lennon or Martin Luther King Jr were scouts. Why did Baden-Powell’s “Scouting for Boys” book become the fourth best-selling book of all time? How has this organization been around since 1907? This is where it gets interesting.  “Scouts weald,” tells us that in 1899 a British general named Robert Baden-Powel won a battle by asking local African tribe boys to administer first aid, carry messages and run errands. He brought this idea to England where it exploded in popularity. Without the help of the internet, scouting spread so fast that within a few decades, it became one of the largest volunteer-based movements in the world. Let’s dive deeper into understanding this movement that attracts so many. 

Great people share many characteristics: confidence, charisma, and the ability to stand in front of hundreds or thousands of people to deliver a message or to do something amazing. Do you know what Dr. King, Queen Elizabeth or Neil Armstrong all have in common? They all wore glasses. Oh, and they were all scouts. Scouting taught these famous people confidence in themselves, and communication skills as they met new people at every scouting event and in their lives.  Martin Luther had an engaging personality, strong beliefs and a steady commitment to positive change which helped him deliver powerful oratories. Neal Armstrong was committed and persistent in reaching his goals. He got the eagle scout badge which in America is the highest youth badge. You need a minimum of 21 badges to get it and many of the badges need to be life-saving, survival and leadership related. They also included first aid, cooking, setting up camp, citizenship of the community and so on.  It’s not just Neil Armstrong but ten-year-olds learn to start fires in the middle of winter, cook a basic meal on it and build a shelter. Wouldn’t you like to be confident in knowing these life-changing skills?

Confidence is just the tip of the iceberg of skills taught by scouts. Every scout day brings a new experience and a new lesson. You cannot learn leadership, teamwork and problem-solving skills from books. You learn them through life experiences, and scouts provide those opportunities. Last year I went on a 2-week camp. One day our patrol was supposed to meet up with the rest of the camp at a place called 3 Crosses. We started on our adventure, not knowing that somebody had turned one of the arrows upside down. We walked for a long time until one of our camp leaders found us and told us to go back.  We were way off course and to go back we decided to bushwhack. Things couldn’t get any worse until they did! It started pouring. We were soaked but we started singing and marching back to camp. What is the importance of this story you ask? When we got lost we didn’t lose confidence in ourselves and we weren’t scared. We problem-solved our way through the forest and challenges. We were committed to getting to our goal. We used teamwork and every team member’s skills to our advantage. This is just one example of how scouts shape our characters.  No wonder in the past one hundred years, over half a billion men and women have taken the Scout Promise.

Even though scouting has been adapting and changing to accommodate the needs of today’s youth and the modern world, in many eyes it is old-fashioned. People do not understand the importance of the skills and the adventures that scouts offer. Social media stereotypes scouts by posting them selling cookies. Today’s youth does not want to admit that it would be too challenging, too outdoorsy and too much time spent away from the internet would be practically impossible. AP News writes that scouting in the USA is suffering a huge decline in membership due to competition from sports leagues, a bad perception by some families, and busy family schedules. 

Imagine you are standing in front of 500 people saying a speech or leading a song, or you are lost in a big city or an escape room with your friends cracking a code. You are confident, you are brave, and you plan this out.  You are persistent, independent, self-disciplined and a great leader. You know how to work in a team and how to problem solve. All these skills you will need to apply to university, get a job and live a successful life.  All these important skills are taught by scouts that empower youth to make a positive contribution to societies all around.

Scouting is in all but 5 countries in the world and if you ask around you will find out that many CEOs, teachers, coaches, doctors, and police officers were once scouts. (Join scouting today and learn new skills to have a more successful tomorrow)

Check out the links below to know more about scouting:

• A brief history of Scouting
• 30 amazing facts about scouts
• What is scouting and what makes it different?
• 10 boy scouts who shaped the world 

Author: Benus Rewkowski, 13 years old, 2023