Non-aligned Scouting and Scout-like organisations
Non-aligned Scouting organizations is a term used by the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) and their member national organizations to refer to Scouting organizations that are not affiliated with them. See List of non-aligned Scouting organizations.
Scout-like organisations are organizations that resemble Scouting in some way. Scout-like organizations have been created both prior to and after the origin of the Scout Movement, and are characterized by use of or similarity to part of the Scout Method.
The Scout movement has led to the formation of many Scouting organizations around the world. However, WOSM and WAGGGS each register only one Scouting organization per country, although that organization can be a federation of several organizations.
Terminology used in this article:
The terms "aligned", "non-aligned", "Scout-like" and "breakaway" used in this article reflect the usage of WOSM, WAGGGS and their member national organizations. WOSM, WAGGGS and their member national organizations refer to organizations that had a common origin or were once associated with them in some way but are no longer associated with them as breakaway organizations. A breakaway organization may also be a Scouting or Scout-like organization.
Aligned and non-aligned Scouting organisations
Since its inception in 1907, the Scout Movement has spread from the United Kingdom to 216 countries and territories around the world. There are at least 520 separate national or regional Scouting associations in the world and most have felt the need to create international Scouting organisations to set standards for Scouting and to coordinate activities among member associations.
Six international Scouting organisations serve 437 of the world's national associations. There is a seventh that is only for adults. The largest two international organisations, WOSM and WAGGGS, have 362 national associations as members, encompassing 38 million Scouts and Guides. Other multinational Scouting organisations include the Confédération Européenne de Scoutisme, Union Internationale des Guides et Scouts d'Europe, and World Federation of Independent Scouts.
There are over 80 Scouting associations or umbrella federations that are not aligned with any international Scouting organisation, including the Eclaireurs Neutres de France. There are also many single groups that are not affiliated with any regional or national association and the majority of these are in Germany, where Scouting is very fragmented. Membership in non-aligned Scouting organizations worldwide is roughly 300,000 to 500,000 individuals.
Scout-like youth organisations
There are also some similar organisations linked to movements such as organised churches, such as the Salvation Army's Adventure Corps and Pioneers, Adventism's Pathfinders, the Nazarene Caravan, the Pentecostal Royal Rangers and Awana, as well as faith-wide groups like the neo-pagan SpiralScouts International. Other groups such as the Camp Fire, YMCA, YWCA, Sokol, Rotaract, Boys' Brigade and Girls' Brigade also have similarities with Scouting, although some of those predate the foundation of Scouting. The TUXIS and Trail Rangers movements were similar organisations which originated about the same time as Scouting; however, these organisations were unable to recover from the disruption of World War II and post-war competition with the Scouting movement. The National FFA Organization and 4-H are also sometimes seen as Scout-like organisations.
Trail Life USA and American Heritage Girls are parallels of the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts although they have a Christian emphasis and are found in Roman Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches.
A uniquely Canadian Scout-like organization is the Junior Forest Wardens, who use as role models not military scouts but rather forest rangers and fire lookouts. Existing since this 1920s, this organization has a more direct tie to ecological conservation, and is popular in British Columbia and Alberta.
South Africa's Voortrekkers are an Afrikaner youth movement founded in 1931 as some Afrikaners found it difficult to participate in a movement founded by their Boer War opponent, Lord Baden-Powell.
In 2003 Navigators USA was formed to enable people to take part in Scouting-like activities which was open to all children and communities. There are over 64 chapters in the US, with new ones being started up in Uganda and in the United Kingdom.[1]
Political and military Scouting substitutes
Scouting has been banned in certain nations and remains banned in some of them. Some countries that have banned Scouting replaced it with youth organisations that are not considered part of the Scouting movement. The Soviet Union banned Scouting in 1922, creating a separate Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union, which gave birth to the Pioneer Movement. It still exists in some fashion in the People's Republic of China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam, and has been turned into a nationalist movement in Tajikistan-the King Somoni Inheritance. There are no externally recognised Scout organisations in Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and the People's Republic of China (except Hong Kong and Macau, which each have a Scouting organisation).
In many parts of Europe the socialist Red Falcons form the International Falcon Movement - Socialist Education International (IFM-SEI). The Woodcraft Folk is the UK branch of IFM-SEI. These organisations adapt many of the methods of Scouting in a socialist orientation. Examples are the Children's Republic, camps run by the SJD-The Falken in Germany in the 1920s, however unlike the concurring Pioneer Movements, IFM–SEI works to further democracy.
Other politically based youth movements still in existence include Fianna na hÉireann, an Irish republican youth movement.
In Andorra, Scouting does not exist, though not because of any bans on such organisations.
Prior to World War II, Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary and Romania disbanded Scouting. Germany created the Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth) organisation; Italy had a fascist youth organisation, the Balilla; and Romania under the Iron Guard had the Străjeria.
Breakaway organisations
Between the first publication of Scouting for Boys in 1908 and the creation of the World Organization of the Scout Movement in 1922, fourteen years had passed and millions of copies of the appealing handbook had been sold in dozens of languages. By that point, Scouting was the purview of the world's youth, as from the outset Baden-Powell had not intended Scouting to be containable by any one school of thought.
The Boys' Brigade Scouts, Church Scout Patrols, Church Lads Brigade Scouts, London Diocesan Boy Scout Corps, Chums Scout Patrols, YMCA Boy Scouts, Boys' Life Brigade Scouts, Salvation Army Corps Boy Scout troops (later formed into the Life-Saving Scouts), early Scout patrols, Scout troops and local Boy Scout associations such as the Battersea Boy Scouts (which became the British Boy Scouts in May 1909) and Baden-Powell's Boy Scout organization formed separately with some later affiliating or amalgamating.
Many groups have formed since the formation of the Scouting "Boy Patrols." Some maintain that the WOSM is far more political and less youth-based than ever envisioned by Lord Baden-Powell. They believe that Scouting in general has moved away from its original intent, because of political machinations that happen to longstanding organisations, and seek to return to the earliest, simplest methods. Others are a result of groups or individuals who refuse to follow the original ideals of Scouting but still desire to participate in Scout-like activities.
An apparent early schism within Scouting occurred from April 1909, when the Battersea Boy Scouts broke away after a brief affiliation to become the British Boy Scouts and grew to comprise an estimated 25 percent of all Scouts in the United Kingdom, before rapidly declining from 1912 onward. From 1932 onward it was called the 'Brotherhood of British Scouts', but returned to the name British Boy Scouts in 1983. It was allied to Scouting organisations in the United States, Italy, Hong Kong, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, South America and India in 1911, and formed what is known as the 'Order of World Scouts' (OWS). The British Boy Scouts was formed because of perceptions of bureaucracy and militaristic tendencies in Baden-Powell's Boy Scout organization. In the United Kingdom, with several smaller organisations, such as the Boy's Life Brigade Scouts, they formed the National Peace Scouts federation. The British Girl Scouts were the female counterpart of the British Boy Scouts. The OWS and BBS survive to this day.
In 1916 a group of Scoutmasters in Cambridge, led by Ernest Westlake and his son Aubrey, who believed that the movement had moved away from its early ideals and had lost its woodcraft character, founded the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry. The order survives to this day in England.
In the years following the First World War, the Commissioner for Camping and Woodcraft John Hargrave, broke with what he considered to be the Scouts' militaristic approach and founded a breakaway organisation, the Kibbo Kift, taking a number of similar-minded Scoutmasters and troops with him.[2] This organisation was the direct antecedent of the Woodcraft Folk.
Many of the Woodcraft Folk's founders including the prominent Leslie Paul had been Boy Scouts and Scout leaders who left Scouting to join the Kibbo Kift but then formed the Woodcraft Folk in 1925.
Traditional Scouting
Baden-Powell Scouts were formed in 1970 in the United Kingdom and later elsewhere, when it was felt that the "modernisation" of Scouting was abandoning the traditions and intentions established by Baden-Powell. Another modern breakaway group is the Christian American Heritage Girls, formed in 1995 in response to the perceived growing liberalism in the Girl Scouts of the USA.[3] In Canada and to some extent in the United States, there is a Traditional Scouting movement, seeking to take Scouting back to the way it was in Baden-Powell's days.[4]
As with American Heritage Girls for young women, Trail Life USA emphasizes traditional scouting for young men.[5]
Scouts-in-Exile
Scouts-in-Exile groups formed overseas from their native country as a result of war and changes in governments. For the Scouts-in-exile groups, serving the community outside their homelands, there is resentment that they were not recognised during their nations' totalitarian periods. These groups often provided postal delivery and other basic services in displaced-persons camps.[6]
References
- http://www.uknavigators.org
- "Official Site". Kibbo Kift Foundation. Archived from the original on 2006-07-17. Retrieved 2006-07-25.
- "Official Site". American Heritage Girls. Archived from the original on 2006-07-14. Retrieved 2006-07-25.
- "Official Site". Traditional Scouting. Retrieved 2006-07-25.
- Hallowell, Billy (2 February 2015). "Alternative Scouting Group's CEO Reveals His Group's Secret to Success — and the Message He Believes It Should Send to the Boy Scouts". Retrieved 13 October 2017.
- Victor M. Alexieff (September 1982). "The Other Ones - Scouts in Exile". SOSSI Journal. XXXVII (9).
