Boy Scouts don’t tend to receive the proper credit that they deserve.
Photo by: Brea Jones, Photographer

By: Katelyn Liston, Reporter

Boy and Girl Scouts are two common organizations that children can join in their community. The two groups are extremely similar; they both have rankings, earn badges, and partake in community service events. The only difference is that boy scouts are constantly undermined for their efforts, even though they do just as much as—maybe even more than—girl scouts.

Girl Scouts are mostly known for their cookie sales in the spring which makes over $700 million dollars per year. Boy Scouts, on the other hand, do not have any distinctive activity or sale which involve them with large sums of people they typically would not associate with. Because of this, Boy Scouts are not acknowledged nearly as much as Girl Scouts.

Boy Scout Shane Elvester says, “Everything that you hear about boy scouts—or well what I hear—is that we do nothing but work on merit badges and we hate gays because of some current events that have happened in the past year. We do work on merit badges, but not as frequently as people would think. What happens a lot during boy scouts is we usually work on helping the community or do something that will either improve some kind of skill for boys…or someone involved with it. We do a lot of things to help the world or small places that need help. Like we clean up the St. John’s River.”

Boy Scouts do multiple things in the community which includes organizing events that donate to different non-profit organizations and associations, handing out safety reminders in the community, or hosting/helping with walks and runs for cancers, diseases, and other causes. Each hour, a boy or supervising adult volunteers is worth about $22.14.

Boy Scouts volunteered 17 million hours in 2013 ($376.38 million worth of service); in the same year they had a total of 105,161 Scout Units. That means that each unit volunteered averaged around 161.7 hours that year. Girl Scouts do not even have a total estimate of their volunteer hours for any one year, but anyone should be able to admit 161.7 hours from a troop is definitely commendable. Taking into account that the children go to school seven hours a day 180 days a year, approximately nine hours of sleep per night, three hours for daily functions (such as eating, religious activities, and bathing), about three hours of unaccounted for troops meetings a week, and more general activities like sports, family time, and homework.

Freshman Natalie Harrison, a member of both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts says, “Girl Scouts really [don’t] do much. Girl Scouts usually [assist in events] to raise money for going on trips, while boy scouts just [assists in events] for day trips.”

Boy Scouts do impressive amounts of community service and have studies on their website that compare the successes Boy Scouts to those not in Boy Scouts, but that does not mean they are better than Girl Scouts. It only means that Boy Scouts should not be undermined and seen as less than Girl Scouts when they make a significant contribution to America’s society. Just because Boy Scouts don’t sell cookies at your door, doesn’t mean they do nothing but earn badges.