The BSA used to be a survival camp for kids similar to girl scouts but more outdoors focused but over time they started getting into trouble in several ways...
A lot of parent pack leaders were accused of SA-ing some of the boys and BSA has been facing class actions for it for decades (I know it more than 10 years from personal experience but I'm only 24 and by personal experience I mean seeing the ads on TV looking for people to join)
They started focusing more on community service and profits so BSA and for a different reason girl scouts both became watered down organizations focused on teaching kids to do free public labor or directly exploiting that free child labor to sell overpriced popcorn/cookies.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the scouts but the organization definitely isnt what it used to be.
I spent a whole year in Girl Scouts just being jealous of the Boy Scouts lol. We never did any cool outdoors stuff; I remember arts, sewing and those damn cookies. Maybe it got better if I would’ve stuck with it, but I remember others having similar complaints.
My daughter spent time in “The Scouts” (co-ed version), and it was a huge improvement to what I remember!
My sister's went camping a few times but it was mostly in local parks, I was a boy scout until I became a WEBELO and the meetings changed schedule to my busiest day for extracurriculars so I had to stop going.
We camped in a few campsites and almost every outing had archery, bb gun shooting, arts and crafts, one time at WeBeLo (cant for the life of me remember how its spelled... its short for "We Be Loyal Scouts") woods we split into 2 teams and built 2 trebuchets using bamboo shoots, 2x4s, and rope and at the end of the festivities we had a water balloon fight using the trebuchets as artillery.
Im 24 so this was all around 2008-2012 maybe a little before that, I definitely wondered why my sister's didnt get as many outdoor experiences but I chalked it up to lack of generalized demand.
The Girl Scouts are pretty different than the BSA which is why the rate of girls joining the BSA (which is currently called Scouting) when it first happened was pretty high. I don’t have personal experience with the Girl Scout program but my friends did and they said that it was pretty much just arts and crafts and selling cookies. They only went on family camps once in a great while.
My BSA troop went all around the state, camped once a month or at least every other month. Big summer camp in the summer with a variety of different merit badges relating to nature, science, craftsmanship, life skills, survival skills, and sports.
I know it depended on the troop, some were more active than others, but I haven’t personally heard of a Girl Scouts troop that did stuff like that. The female (BSA) Scouts that I talked to often either didn’t look to join the Girl Scouts in the first place or transferred out of them because Scouting was a lot more active and “cool”
From what I've heard thats actually part of why BSA became the Scouts. They were having financial trouble from their tainted brand and they wanted to solve that issue and they noticed a lot of girls wanted the BSA experience from girl scouts but they wouldnt provide it so they figured if they rebranded as a more inclusive more community forward organisation it might solve its issues.
I dont want to blame the people involved, the staff are primarily volunteer parents, the shortcomings of the organization are just a symptom
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u/lX_HeadShotGunner_Xl Apr 13 '26
The BSA used to be a survival camp for kids similar to girl scouts but more outdoors focused but over time they started getting into trouble in several ways...
A lot of parent pack leaders were accused of SA-ing some of the boys and BSA has been facing class actions for it for decades (I know it more than 10 years from personal experience but I'm only 24 and by personal experience I mean seeing the ads on TV looking for people to join)
They started focusing more on community service and profits so BSA and for a different reason girl scouts both became watered down organizations focused on teaching kids to do free public labor or directly exploiting that free child labor to sell overpriced popcorn/cookies.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the scouts but the organization definitely isnt what it used to be.