Scouts look to expand the tent

[unhappycamper]

In Lawrence, Jose Nunez spoke to boys about the responsibility of becoming a Boy Scout. (David Kamerman/ Globe Staff)

Recruiting targets immigrant youths


Scouts look to expand the tent
By Keith O'Brien, Globe Staff | August 13, 2007

LAWRENCE -- Charles Boddy thought they got it. He believed the Spanish-speaking ministers sitting before him embraced his message: that membership in the Boy Scouts would be great for Latino youths. But as he left the church that day, one minister approached him with a simple question.

"What's a Scout?"

The Boy Scouts of America -- even with its declining enrollment and controversial stance on banning gay scoutmasters -- is an iconic national institution dating to 1910. But as Boddy, a bilingual scouting volunteer, has learned in the two years since the Scouts launched a recruiting campaign in Lawrence, "Los Boy Scouts" does not always translate in Latino communities. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by the Scouts, many Latino families see the organization as an "Anglo" club.

But with national enrollment down nearly 10 percent since 1998, the Boy Scouts are now reaching out to a community long overlooked, if not ignored, and retooling their marketing strategies to target the nation's largest and fastest growing minority: Latinos. Handbooks, advertisements, and even bumper stickers have been translated into Spanish. And though the organization is predominantly white, the Scouts are getting creative by offering soccer programs to children of immigrants from Central and South America who other wise might not think about camping, hiking, or knot-tying.

The Scouts say they have no reliable national data just yet to show how this effort is going. But in Framingham, Lawrence, and other communities, the results are obvious. The Scout council in Framingham has enrolled more than 150 children, most of them Brazilian, in a year-round soccer program. In Lawrence, enrollment in traditional programs has almost quadrupled.

In the last two years in this mostly Latino community, membership in scouting programs has gone from 53 to 250, primarily due to efforts, like Boddy's, to reach Spanish-speaking families. And where there were once just three Cub Scout packs and Boy Scout troops, there are now nine, including the newly reconstituted Troop 2, where the leaders and the children are all Latino.

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[Smarmie Doofus]

1. But still no gays, no agnostics, no secularists.

If they're thinking that Hispanic communities are more receptive to their 'God and Heteros only ' ideology they may be setting themselves up for disappointment.

Plenty of Latins are gay, gay friendly, and/or secular... stereotypes to the contrary notwithstanding.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. They go far beyond just banning gay scoutmasters

Gay boys as well, not to mention atheist scoutmasters, atheist boys, and anyone with a religious position that calls the BSA's attitudes bigoted (learn more about the conflicts between the Boy Scouts of America and the Unitarian-Universalist Association here, here and here.) Then there is a problem with kids who are not the correct religion such as Wicca (the BSA has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the Hart and Crescent religious award, issued by the Covenant of the Goddess (see here.)

My grandfather was heavily involved with the Boy Scouts for more than half a century. He quit the group in disgust in the early 90s.