Bob Gowans from the local Boy Scouts of America office spoke to us this morning about the purpose of Boy Scouting, whose values and purpose are very similar to those of Rotary. Many were surprised to hear that scouting is not for boys to earn their Eagle Scout, but to learn to become future leaders and good citizens while earning their advancements.Since its beginning in 1910 there have been over 112,000,000 boy scouts in the United States. Current membership is close to 3 million with nearly 9,000 registered members in Washington County. While most scouts are supported by religious organizations, Rotary's sponsorship of scouting units places in the top 20.
Service is a very important part of scouting as the boys must do service to earn rank advancements. To receive their Eagle Scout a boy must manage and oversee a project helping schools, churches or communities that average around 150 hours. Patricia shared her experience of a scout who took down the fence at her old center, put it back up after refinishing it, bracing it,
and adding gates at her new location. Scouting for Food is another project that benefits the community where scouts collect food for local food banks. In our community scouts collected 77,000 pounds of food for Dixie Care and Share. In the early years of scouting scouts were involved in helping their communities and countries. During WWI they grew victory gardens to provide fresh vegetables to families. In WWII scouts raised thousands of dollars selling war bonds and collected tons of clothes. In 1962 they planted 6.2 million trees and topped it by picking up over 1 million tons of liter in 1971.As a service club we can be thankful scouting is actively looking for ways to serve and some of the current scouts are also sure to become future Rotarians.
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