Thread: Scouting for Hispanics.

Scouting for Hispanics
Local and national efforts aim to draw more Latinos into largest youth group
Recommend Comments


January 5, 2009

From Staff & Wire Reports
As it prepares to turn 100 in 2010, the Boy Scouts of America is honing its survival skills for what might be its biggest test yet: drawing Hispanics into its declining -- and mostly white -- ranks.

"We either are going to figure out how to make Scouting the most exciting, dynamic organization for Hispanic kids, or we're going to be out of business," said Rick Cronk, former national president of the Boy Scouts, and chairman of the World Scout Committee.

» Click to enlarge image

Allison Reding, 16, of Lindenhurst, a Scouting Venture Crew staffer at Camp Oakarro in Wadsworth, helps Luis Rocha, 6, of Round Lake Beach, climb a rock wall in June 2007.

(Sun-Times News Group File Photo)


RELATED STORIES
• Web site: Three Fires Council
The campaign is taking place on a national scale as well as through local efforts, including the Scouts' Fox Valley organization, the St. Charles-based Three Fires Council.

The venerable Scouts organization remains the United States' largest youth organization, with 2.8 million children and youths, nearly all of them boys. But that is nearly half its peak membership, reached in 1972.

Its rolls took hits through the 1980s and '90s over a still-standing ban on gay or atheist leaders, and scandals surrounding inflated membership numbers. In addition, teenagers raised on TV and shoot-'em-up games had less use for learning to build a campfire or memorize the Scout oath.

The country changed, too. One in five children under 18 is Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census. But they make up only 3 percent of Scouts.

Cronk made Hispanic outreach a focus after he realized that just translating brochures into Spanish, or combining Cub Scouting with soccer, was not enough to meet the goal of doubling Hispanic membership by the group's centennial in 2010.

"We were nibbling around the edges," Cronk said. "We knew very little about the Hispanic family, how they see us, what they value."

Cronk, past president of Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, grew up a city kid in Oakland, Calif. He fell in love with Scouting in the Sierra Nevada, during his first backpacking excursions.

He looked at the problem of Latino underrepresentation as a businessman. The Boy Scouts had a good product, but much of its new consumer base had never heard of it.

So the group set out to sell Scouting, hiring a Washington-based media and marketing company that targets Latinos. To spread the word, the Scouts gathered a committee of Hispanic leaders, including the CEO of AT&T's wireless unit, a U.S. senator from Florida and the archbishop of the Diocese of Laredo.

Local efforts

The Three Fires Council -- which oversees Boy Scout troops in Kane, DeKalb, DuPage and Kendall counties, has been increasing its efforts to recruit Hispanic and Latino members. An Aurora pastor is spearheading the first of what the council hopes will be several church and Scout partnerships.

"The values Scouting teaches are the very same ones rooted by Hispanic and Latino family culture," said Guillermo Ovalle, pastor of Cristano Peniel in Aurora. Peniel decided to start a Venture Crew, a type of Scouting unit, as a way to keep kids away from gangs and drugs, and to increase opportunities for family and neighborhood activities.

"We are trying to open doors and make opportunities available" to the area's Hispanic population, said Nancy Loftus, marketing and communications director for Three Fires Council, which is based in St. Charles. "We're hoping to try to encourage other churches with large Hispanic or Latino communities to do the exact same thing."

In 2009, the Boy Scouts is kicking off pilot programs in six heavily Latino cities, from Fresno, Calif. to Orlando, Fla., to test ways of introducing Scouting to immigrant parents. The group also is planning radio and television spots; hiring bicultural, Spanish-speaking staffers; partnering with churches that serve Hispanics; and shaping programs to fit the family-oriented community.

"We're serious about this," said Rob Mazzuca, chief Scout executive. "This is a reinventing of the Boy Scouts of America."

To work, the changes will have to run deep, said Julio Cammarota, a University of Arizona professor who has researched Hispanic youth.

Scouts will have to work with Latinos' strong family connections and relax the focus on individual achievement, Cammarota said. Creating activities where younger boys learn from the older ones -- much as they rely on siblings and cousins within the extended family -- will also feel more comfortable.

"They'd be better off starting with a carne asada in a city park," Cammarota said. "Sending their kids away on their own, that's not familiar."

Scouting's traditional values dovetail well with those of Hispanic families -- respect, discipline, and community involvement -- said Carlos Alcazar, CEO of Hispanic Communications Network, which developed the 2009 strategy after conducting a yearlong survey of Hispanic attitudes toward the Scouts.

In the Fox Valley, more information can be obtained on the Three Fires Council, on existing local troops or on how to start a Boy Scouts troop by calling Larry Bethers at 630-584-9250 or visiting www.threefirescouncil.org.

Staff writer Cigi Ross contributed to this report.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/cour ... S1.article

Cronk made Hispanic outreach a focus after he realized that just translating brochures into Spanish, or combining Cub Scouting with soccer, was not enough to meet the goal of doubling Hispanic membership by the group's centennial in 2010.

Is it ever enough? It won't be enough till it becomes a total hispanic venture.

Scouting's traditional values dovetail well with those of Hispanic families -- respect, discipline, and community involvement -- said Carlos Alcazar,

Vs everyone else? Excuse me while I take my kid off the chain out back, the pack of Poodles nead a break from thier duties, and it's time to get him ready to get to work in those pot fields tonight.

They Better "Be Prepared" to handle em, Because the entire United States and Police and FBI and Homeland Insecurity Can't!!

They Better "Be Prepared" to handle em, Because the entire United States and Police and FBI and Homeland Insecurity Can't!!

I giggled a bit at this, though meant at a certain population of people.

Psalm 91