Scouting Resources

Both Scouts BSA (Formerly known as Boy Scouts of America) and Girl Scouts of the USA have a strong interest in developing strong, confident youth leaders with a deep appreciation of the outdoors and an ability to navigate proficiently in it. In both organizations, the structure exists for effective structured navigational training, but additional resources are necessary for a successful introduction to the sport of orienteering.

Scouts BSA feature a couple of achievement goals on the orienteering topic—the orienteering merit badge and the First Class award. But often, in the absence of viable orienteering maps, the focus turns entirely to azimuths and compass skills, missing much of the terrain recognition and map-reading expertise that forms the core of the sport of orienteering

Girl Scouts once had an find your way badge, and the requirements from it are still recycled years later by troop leaders who can find this historic resource. Other leaders find themselves looking outside the organization for resources to give their scouts the training necessary to build strong outdoor leadership.

Scouts BSA: Orienteering Merit Badge

Here is an excellent written plan for how to achieve the requirements of this badge. While still compass-heavy, it exposes scouts to orienteering maps, concepts, and courses for a full intro to the topic. 

You can also use your local orienteering club as a resource. Most events  hosted by clubs will fulfill the requirements 3 and 4.

Scouts BSA: First Class Rank

The First Class Rank Requirements cover far more than outdoor navigation. But included in these are several goals for which our local club’s orienteering events are highly useful:

1a. Participate in 10 patrol activities (over half outdoors). Orienteering Club events are pre-planned, with variety, structure, and quality built in.

4a. Using a map and compass, complete an orienteering course that covers at least one mile and requires measuring the height and/or width of designated items (tree, tower, canyon, ditch, etc.) . Orienteering courses are measured in kilometers, so any course longer than 1.6 km qualifies. Depending on the course, the measurement of height and/or width of designated items may be part of the course or may have to be added on, often measuring an item near the start or finish.

9d. Participate in three hours of service through one or more service projects. Orienteering clubs are volunteer-driven, work regularly with parks, and routinely have needs to improve those relationships through service projects or volunteer assistance with an event.

Final Projects: Eagle (Scouts BSA) and Gold (Girl Scouts) Award

Some scouts have produced permanent orienteering courses in their areas for their Eagle Scout or Gold Award service project. Several of them incorporate QR technology that can be used with smartphones.

Equally useful, once a local club has enough permanent courses to manage and update over time, is the creation of a new orienteering map of a local park for community use. This can either become a local club resource or stay within the troop as a long-term scouts fundraiser, for hosting yearly orienteering events for the local community.

Other scout resources