Homeless Boys Encouraged to Join Scouts

Richard Whitaker, 16, has moved with his family six times within 10 years, staying in temporary shelters until his father found a job.

Being a Boy Scout was just one of the things he had missed out on, until the scouts reached out to him and other disadvantaged youngsters housed in family shelters and welfare hotels around the country.

“Just because they’re homeless doesn’t mean they can’t do well in school or be a Boy Scout,” said Howard Sidney, a counselor at the Anna M. Sample House.

The Camden shelter, where the Whitakers stayed until they rented a house nearby about three months ago, is headquarters of Boy Scout Troop 108, part of the “Scoutreach” program started last year.

Whitaker is one of the troop’s 16 members. Some of the boys are from the shelter and others live elsewhere in the neighborhood. About 27% of this city’s 85,000 people are on welfare and in any given month, an estimated 500 of them--including 85 children--are homeless.

“Most people my age say it’s not cool being a Boy Scout,” Whitaker said, “but I think it’s kind of fun. I can be a role model.”

The Scoutreach program has organized troops in shelters, welfare hotels and storefronts in New York, Baltimore, Washington and Detroit, said Lee Sneath, a spokesman for the Irving, Tex.-based Boy Scouts of America.

“It’s more of an evolutionary process than it is a revolutionary process,” Sneath said. “Now that society is recognizing the plight of these people, (scouting is) simply responding.”

Sneath said that about 4.3 million youngsters in the United States are involved in scouting. Camden’s Troop 108 is one of more than 130,000 scout troops across the nation and one of the newest. Scoutreach troops participate in many of the same activities as regular troops, including camping trips and merit badges projects. The members of Whitaker’s troop can earn badges by cleaning and performing other chores at the shelter.

“By having a Boy Scout troop that meets right at the shelter, it gives them a sense of participation in a mainstream institution,” said Harold Oliver Jr., director of emergency services for the agency that runs the Camden shelter.

“Hope is the most important item we have to deal with at the shelter,” said Oliver. “The Boy Scouts deliver hope in big doses to these boys and their families.”

Members of Troop 103, at a welfare hotel in New York City, will participate in the scouts’ nationwide food drive Nov. 18, Sneath said.

“Here is a troop that is literally at the bottom of the economic rung, yet they are involved themselves in helping others,” Sneath said.

In Ft. Worth, Tex., Explorer Post 588 is based at Willoughby House, a halfway house for girls. The 18 girls and women in the post have served time for minor offenses.

In Camden, Whitaker’s mother, Betty, serves as a den mother and his father, Robert, is one of three scoutmasters.

“It feels great,” Betty Whitaker said.

The family was forced to move into the shelter after Robert Whitaker lost his job and could not find another. He now works as a security guard.

The Camden troop, which went on a weeklong camping trip last summer, is organizing activities to raise $1,200 for uniforms and handbooks.

“The basic vision on this is that these children are normal children and they have the desires and expectations of any children,” Oliver said.