March 4, 2015
Boy Scouts return to North County
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A panel discusses scouting with a group of potential Boy Scouts at a screening of “Troop 491: The Adventures of the Muddy Lions” on the UMSL campus.
Initiative works to reintroduce scouting to underserved communities By Sara Hardin The Great St. Louis Area Council is reintroducing the Boy Scouts of America to communities in North St. Louis County with the support of Ferguson community leaders and organizations. Christine Dieckmann, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Boy Scouts of America Greater St. Louis Area Council, explained how new scout troops and Exploring Posts in Ferguson and the surrounding community benefit the community’s youth. “We are working with community leaders to create more units so that we can serve more youth,” explained Dieckmann. “Right now we are looking to start seven units. That will be a combination of Boy Scout Troops and Exploring Posts, our co-ed high school program. Exploring Posts are a good way to expose high school youth to different careers. Right now we’ve got an Exploring Post that just started at the Ferguson Fire Department, and kids who join that post are able to essentially train with the fire professionals there. They get to put on the equipment, go through some of the training, and learn how to do proper fire safety. We are also going to have an Exploring Post at the Ferguson Police Department.” Starting new Boy Scout Troops starts with finding proper leadership. In order to educate adults and youth about scouting, the Greater St. Louis Area Council hosted a screening of a film titled “Troop
491: The Adventures of the Muddy Lions” for students from several school districts in North St. Louis County at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “‘Troop 491’ served as a vehicle to expose a large number of people to the program,” said Dieckmann. “We can go in and talk about scouting as much as we want to, but to actually show them the program on the screen – that was pretty instrumental. It talked about a lot of things related to today’s youth. The movie talks about this young boy’s life and how he’s being pulled in all of these different directions, and then his mom puts him in a Boy Scout troop and it helps keep him out of trouble and also gives him a lot of good life lessons along the way. The movie is a great way to introduce community leaders and adults to what scouting can do.” The director of the film, a scout from Richmond, Virginia named Praheme, flew to St. Louis to be at the showing and speak to the kids about the film, his experiences, and the benefit of having a youth program such as Boy Scouts in a community. The council’s efforts to create more scout units and get community youth involved in its personal growth programs are all part of its “Restoring the Village” initiative, whose supporters believe the character education and scouting programs are vital to youth. “We at Boy Scouts believe the scouting
program is very important, and I think some of the recent events that have happened in North County have highlighted that need for youth programs,” said Dieckmann. “The adults of North County have been so supportive and so willing to help out and do whatever it takes to help bring youth programs such as Boy Scouts into the community, and I think that’s huge. Without the community’s support and without the adults’ support we couldn’t have any type of program for the youth, and the youth really benefit from that.” For more information, visit stlbsa.org.
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Local Author: James K. Lehman
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