Outdoor Service Guides

Myth-buster time! Think you need to be a rugged wilderness survival expert to lead an Outdoor Service Guides group? 🏕️❌ Let’s clear the air: you don’t need to know how to construct a log cabin with your bare hands or navigate the deep woods by the stars to be a volunteer leader. 1/4

Leadership in our organization is really about logistics, safety, and creating an inclusive space for kids to explore. If you can keep a group organized, enthusiastic, and moving in the same direction, you already have what it takes. 3/4

Myth-buster time! Think you need to be a rugged wilderness survival expert to lead an Outdoor Service Guides group? 🏕️❌ Let’s clear the air: you don’t need to know how to construct a log cabin with your bare hands or navigate the deep woods by the stars to be a volunteer leader. 1/4

Scouting is an outdoor movement—that is the core of its character. 🌲 To whatever degree daily life or city schedules force us indoors, we treat it as a temporary necessity, never a substitute for the real thing. We believe that nature is central to human confidence and well-being. 1/3

Our guides learn by doing, whether that's navigating a river channel, paddling in sync with a teammate, or practicing water safety. No screens, no national sales targets—just the open water. 🛶 2/3

You start a group in your area with a few friends. As your group grows, other parents pitch in too. They don't have to have outdoor experience - that's just one part of OSG's program. Parents help lead a craft, a game, or coordinate a trip to a fire station. 1/2

Other scouting organizations teach the basics of fire building and use matches or lighters to start their fires. Outdoor Service Guides learn traditional scouting skills, like starting a fire with a ferro rod or flint and steel. 1/3

These pathfinders (grades 6-12) are splitting wood with a fixed blade knife to get dry material, shaving thin pieces for their tinder, and starting a fire using a ferro rod and steel. 2/3

Sometimes having fun in the woods doesn't mean learning skills. Sometimes it means stabbing a dead pieces of wood with a stick. Our youngest guides are issued a titanium spoon so that when the skills aren't as interesting when you're in preschool, you can go dig in the dirt. 1/2

Our youth guides aren't the only ones who have fun outdoors. 🌲 Our Rover section is a fully active program for adults (ages 18+) who want to scout for themselves. We believe #everybodyscouts, including adults.

Whether you are a parent who wants to model the Scout Law alongside your kids, or an adult without children who is looking for a community of inclusive, outdoor-loving humans, the Rovers are for you. You’ll challenge yourself, learn woodcraft, render service, and yes—earn real proficiency badges.

When folks don't find an established OSG group in their area, some consider the idea of starting a new group intimidating. But you don't have to start a new group on your own, and you don't have to be a wilderness bushcraft expert. 1/5

Ready to bring inclusive, back-to-basics scouting to your town? Summer is a great time to start laying the groundwork to have a group up and running just in time for the new school year. 4/5

When folks don't find an established OSG group in their area, some consider the idea of starting a new group intimidating. But you don't have to start a new group on your own, and you don't have to be a wilderness bushcraft expert. 1/5

Get two or three more friends or parents at your kid's school to start a group together. One person handles membership and dues, another person plans activities, and a third rounds up supplies. 2/5

On International Women's Day (and every day) we celebrate the women and girls worldwide. As we celebrate, we are mindful of the inequalities and injustices that remain and the persistence of women and their allies in fighting them. #internationalwomensday #everybodyscouts

Rover Kelsey Truex of the 77th Eagles in Cuyahoga Falls, OH receives her tenderfoot badge at a group meeting. Outdoor Service Guides offers scouting for all - youth and adults. Rank advancement and 40 profiency badges available for adult scouts. #everybodyscouts #evenadults

Today, we honor the progress made in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights — and commit to the work still ahead. (1/2) #PrideDay #LoveIsLove #ScoutingForEverybody #diversity #equity #inclusion

Today, we honor Juneteenth—a day of liberation, remembrance, and resilience marking when freedom reached the last enslaved Black Americans. While we celebrate, we also recognize the incomplete, ongoing fight for equity and justice. 1/2 #Juneteenth #diversity #equity #inclusion #scoutingforeverybody

#martinlutherking #everybodyscouts