A Reflection on My Involvement with The Boy Scouts

My involvement with the Boy Scouts organization began at an early age. I began in the lower of the Scout divisions: Cub Scouts. However, The most important skill I learned was the importance of community service. The first application of community service that I learned through Cub Scouts organization was the importance of the phrase, “Leave no trace.” Essentially, this phrase means that individuals should leave whatever area that they are in the same or better than they found it. We extended this phrase later in Cub Scouts to signify that it is our responsibility to clean the wilderness, because other individuals are mistreating the beauty of the wild. Our scout troop came together on many occurrences to take hikes in the Oak Mountain State Park to learn about nature and clean up after others. Though Many people found the community service to be dull and boring, to some people it felt like sitting at your mom’s meeting at work. However, I found an instant interest in community service and I felt that I could truly make a difference and make other people happier.

Cub Scouts provided me the base skills of knowledge on community service with the activities we completed during camp outs and hiking. But Boy Scouts advanced my understanding of community service. One of my favorite community service experiences of my life was my Eagle Scout project. As part of earning your Eagle rank, each scout must perform some form of community service, raise all the funds, and plan the entire project. Since the beginning of intermediate school, my mom had collected newspapers from her school to benefit the Lexington Humane Society. I would go into her work and roll the newspapers in a specific way for the lining of the kennel cages in the humane society. My continued involvement with the organization made me want to help them in any way that I could.

Upon getting my Life rank, the rank before Eagle Scout, I began planning my Eagle Scout project and remained in contact with the lead supervisor of the Lexington Humane Society. The biggest necessity that they had was an improvement to their adoption space outside. The adoption space gave potential adopters a chance to see how the animal would behave in an outside environment; however, the space needed a make-over. I raised the money for the project by selling some of my unwanted possessions along with donations from other families in a yard sale. With this money, I began to improve the landscaping of the humane society. There were two trees in the area that were overgrown and taking up much needed space for the adopters. My volunteer team and I trimmed the trees to make them look like beautiful paintings. I created a white rock pathway to allow the employees easy access to the outside pins across from the adoption area. I then pressure washed the concrete benches and birdbath in the area to make it feel like you are sitting on pillows. Since most of the area had little grass, I created a small patio from concrete in the shape of a paw print. The area was enclosed by landscaping edger and filled with white rock. Upon completion of the project, I felt like I made a difference in giving the area outside of the humane society more aesthetic to bring in more adopters. 

My involvement in scouting has allowed me to complete a community service project for the benefit of a nonprofit organization. Scouting has shown me the importance of community service. I would not have made these choices and would not be as involved with helping my community without the scouting organization.