Girl Scouts of the USA will be
celebrating its 108th birthday on
March 12, and Boy Scouts of America
just turned 110 years old in February.
Both of these organizations started
in England by a man named Robert
Baden-Powell. He wrote a book called
Aids to Scouting, which was a military
field manual written for British soldiers
in 1899.
Younger boys started reading the
manual and loved the lessons on tracking
and observation. They organized
elaborate games using the book. Baden-
Powell found out how popular his book
was, and decided to write another
non-military field manual that would also
emphasize morality and good deeds just
for boys.
Before writing this book, Baden-Powell
decided to try some of his ideas with an
actual group of boys. On July 25, 1907,
he took 21 boys to an island in England
where they set up camp for two weeks.
Baden-Powell and some other instructors
taught the boys about camping,
observation, deduction, woodcrafting,
boating, lifesaving, patriotism and
chivalry. Many lessons were learned with
inventive games and were very popular
with the boys. This was the first Boy
Scout meeting, and it was a huge success.
On January 28, 1908 in England,
Baden-Powell's first installment of
Scouting for Boys was published and
thousands of boys bought the book.
By the end of april, 1908, many Boy
Scout troops had sprung up across
Britain.
The book was a winner, and Baden-
Powell set up a central Boy Scout office,
registered Boy Scouts, and designed a
uniform. By the end of 1908, there were
over 60,000 boys registered. Troops
began springing up all over the
globe in British Commonwealth
countries. About a year later,
Britain had the first national
Boy Scout meeting.
Thousands of Boy
Scouts showed up,
including a group of
uniformed girls who
called themselves Girl
Scouts. In 1910, Baden-
Powell and his sister,
Agnes Baden-Powell, started
Girl Guides as a separate
organization.
How Scouting started in America
When Chicago publisher William
Boyce was lost in London. A Boy Scout
came to his aid and guided him. The
Scout refused to take a tip, explaining
to Boyce that a Scout could not take
money for doing a good deed. Boyce
came back to the United States and
on February 8, 1910 the Boy Scouts of
America was incorporated. Thousands
of boys registered as Boy Scouts spread
throughout the country. Just like in
England, the girls wanted to be scouts
too, and in 1912, Juliette Gordon Low
founded the Girl Scouts of the USA in
Savannah, Georgia.
So what have the Boy Scouts
and Girl Scouts been doing for a
hundred years?
Scouts meet regularly all year long.
Scouts work together doing community
Scouting
History
Robert Baden-Powell
14 • Of f icialKidsMag.com • MARCH 2020
