The “Scouting at Home” badge

The pandemic presents a unique challenge to our Scouts. Most of our customary activities are unavailable to us during this time. We can’t meet in our usual large groups. In response, the Outdoor Service Guides created the "Scouting at Home" badge to encourage continued engagement from our Scouts young and old.

Our goal is that every Scout has ample opportunity to earn this badge, both to keep our community ties strong and later to wear as a positive reminder of persevering through adversity.

And Scouts want to earn it. This is an incredibly cool badge - it glows in the dark!

Scouts will be able to work towards this badge until we resume regular operations.

The requirements for this badge are:

1. Explore a local park on your own or with your family. Do at least one of the following:

   • Pick up trash along a trail (bring bags and gloves).

   • Find a Geocache (see http://www.geocaching.com)

   • Identify and record 5 different trees, 5 different flowers, or 5 different animals.

2. Complete at least one requirement toward a proficiency or special proficiency badge(s) for your section.

3. Communicate directly with your section or patrol leader(s), either through a phone call, text, email, video call, or virtual scout meeting.

4. Do something to help a neighbor (unrelated to you). [Ex. Mow lawn, run errands, make a card or sign.]

5. Learn (or invent) a new outdoor game you can play with your family.

6. Take a selfie in your uniform, wearing a mask, and send it to your Group Scoutmaster!

The section leaders will be happy to work with your Scouts, sending out ideas each month.  

Again, our goal is that every Scout who is interested will have ample opportunity to earn this badge, which they can wear on their uniforms ever after as a (positive) reminder of this eventful period. 

The “Scouting at Home” badge is worn next to the Inclusive Scouting badge (Inclusive Scouting should always be closer to the shirt placket, and thereby closer to the Scout’s heart).

For Scouts who earned the BPSA 10th Anniversary Badge in 2016, Scouting at Home will sit on the outside.

A Scout’s badges tell their story; read left to right, it begins with inclusion and tells the other events in chronological order.

We look forward to the day when Scouting at Home is no longer our daily life and becomes part of our shared history. Until then, keep working on those requirements!