Scouting is a modern, forward looking, co-educational youth movement for the 21^st Century.

Scouting, like many other youth organisations, offers young people the opportunity to take part in various outdoor activities. However, it offers much more than this. The programme is so wide and varied that it provides young people with the opportunity to try new activities as well as develop particular interests. The programme for Explorer Scouts and Network members is closely linked to the Duke of Edinburgh Award and members of these Sections can work towards these awards as well as the Scout Awards.

In addition, Scouting is a value based organisation, which makes it stand apart from many other organisations. All full members of the Movement have to make a promise (appropriate to their age) which requires them to accept a code of behaviour and personal responsibility.

Scouting exists to contribute to the education of young people, through a value system based on the Scout Promise and Law, to help build a better world where people are self-fulfilled as individuals and play a constructive role in society.

This is achieved by:

• involving them throughout their formative years in a non-formal educational process
• using a specific method that makes each individual the principal agent of his or her development as a self-reliant, supportive, responsible and committed person
• assisting them to establish a value system based upon spiritual, social and personal principles as expressed in the Promise and Law.

The aim of Scouting is to promote the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potentials as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their local, national and international communities.

The World Scout Movement began in the United Kingdom in 1907 with an experimental camp on Brownsea Island, Dorset. During the week-long camp, Robert Baden-Powell and a small party of boys put into practice his ideas for training young people in responsible citizenship. In August the following year, the first official Scout Camp was held at Humshaugh, near Hexham, Northumberland.

Today, there are well over 28 million Members in over 216 countries and territories and the Movement is still growing. Two-thirds of the world’s Scouts live in developing countries.

In the UK, the total Membership is 450,562.