Lighting The Fire -- Boy Scouts Try To Build Membership Among Minority Communities

Be prepared: These are not your average Boy Scouts.

The patrol leader holds one hand high in a Rainier Valley church hall, chest taut as a sail in wind. As he blows a whistle and drops his hand, 26 boys centipede into formation, a human "U" of olive pants and tan shirts, arms stiff as cedars at their sides.

The Sunday meeting of Troop 286 of the Chief Seattle Council's Thunderbird District has come to order.

Next comes the national Boy Scout song - of Vietnam, that is, because these are the sons of Vietnamese immigrants, some of the newest seekers of the American Dream. Some were involved in World Scout Bureau-recognized Scouting activities in their native country before the Communist overthrow.

Troops like 286 are rare. Nationally, Boy Scouts of America has a long way to go toward earning a merit badge for recruiting ethnic and racial minorities, and the low-income, either as members or as adult leaders.

A 1992 Carnegie Foundation report on adolescent activity placed the group's national minority membership at only 18 percent. Girl Scouts of the USA, meanwhile, reports a figure of 14 percent.

The reasons are many - a lack of adult volunteers, inadequate outreach, unfamiliarity with the program among some cultures, language barriers and image problems. The 87-year-old organization, with more than 5 million members, still can't shake notions of the stereotypical goody-two-shoes helping an elderly lady across the street.

"(Former Eagle Scout and now Gov.) Gary Locke certainly is someone who continues to be a good example of that," says Tom Kubota, Thunderbird District chair.

During the last five years, Boy Scouts of America has expanded outreach efforts in minority and low-income communities, but with paltry success - with exceptions such as Troop 286.

Trung Pham, a City of Seattle transportation department employee, founded the troop early last year with just eight members. Sponsored by Brighton Presbyterian Church, whose congregation is heavily Vietnamese, it now has 28, from all over the Seattle area - from Ballard, Bothell, Renton, Des Moines.

Its meetings reflect a shift in how some immigrant communities view their sons' participation: Rather than a means to speed up assimilation, it's a way to preserve one's ethnic heritage while learning life skills. For other minority communities, it can be a form of cultural affirmation.

For the first 15 minutes of every two-hour meeting, the boys of Troop 286 learn about Vietnamese culture or history; today, they listen to a talk on Vietnam's historical centuries-long struggle with China.

Vietnamese adults have a responsibility to share such knowledge, says volunteer Duy Nguyen, a Boeing engineer. "We don't have a center or money to pay people. To keep our culture, we have to do this."

Joining is also a way for boys from low-income families to experience Scouting activities such as hiking, camping and backpacking. And, in many cases, it can insulate them from gang activity and instill character skills espoused by the Boy Scout creed.

"If you're a Boy Scout, you grow up to be trustworthy," says 12-year-old Binh Nguyen. "You learn to live by the Scout law."

Scouting, founder Pham says, once targeted mostly middle-class whites. Parents, once Scouts themselves, would spark their child's interest by passing on their own memories and enthusiasm. Lighting that fire for kids in the severely underrepresented Thunderbird District - which includes neighborhoods such as Beacon Hill, the Central Area and Rainier Valley - takes more than rubbing two sticks together.

Tom Kubota, Thunderbird's district chair, joined the Scouts as an 8-year-old in 1948 and stuck with it through the end of high school. When his own son was old enough to be a Cub Scout, he came back as a Scoutmaster.

That was 16 years ago. Kubota recently was named volunteer of the year for Thunderbird, one of three districts in the Seattle area. The others are Aquila, which includes West Seattle, Highline and Des Moines; and Aurora, which includes north Seattle and Shoreline.

Thunderbird, which holds its annual camp event this weekend, is the runt of the litter, with about 400 youth members. In contrast, both Aquila and Aurora have about 2,000 or more.

In Kubota's time, Thunderbird's membership was far higher - about 1,800 boys in 80-plus troops, he says, many of them mostly Italian. Back then, "boys wore their uniforms to school, because there were den meetings after school at someone's house. Every day, you'd see one of your classmates in uniform."

Time has changed Thunderbird's ethnic and economic composition, and the number of troops is down to 27. Chief Seattle Council officials estimate the district served only 5 percent of its eligible youths last year. (The national average served by districts is about 25 percent.)

Racial and ethnic representation among members and Scout leaders are not statistics the council keeps handy in its backpack. The agency does not record such information, relying instead on spotty response to voluntary surveys.

Last year the Chief Seattle Council reported minority membership of 19.5 percent. (The Girl Scouts' Totem Council, which serves the Northwest portion of Washington state, cites a figure of 12 percent.)

Nationally, there is no estimate.

Four years ago, the agency began Urb Emphasis, a generic name for outreach efforts in low-income and minority communities. It also features minorities in public-service announcements and employs high-ranking minority staffers who buttress recruitment efforts wherever needed.

Without tracking numbers, it's hard to measure success, agrees national Scouts spokesman Greg Shields. "But we do sense there's a growth."

Why don't they come? Lonwood Castro Sr., a Filipino American who turned Scoutmaster because of 9-year-old Lonwood Castro Jr., can't twist boys' arms. His multi-ethnic troop has only seven members. "The year before last, a couple of meetings, we only had one boy show up," says the Beacon Hill business owner. "And I'll give you one guess as to who that was."

Troops need leaders, and willing adults are scarce - intimidated, perhaps, by the prospect of raising money in impoverished neighborhoods for kids who can't afford $60 uniforms and $140 summer camps. With no one to show them the ropes - a support system taken for granted in other districts - people are hesitant to apply.

"People are maybe being told to jump right in and be a leader, and it kind of freaks them out," says district chair Kubota.

That happened to volunteer Janet Nakano, who drove her grandson to his first Scout meeting five years ago. "They gave me a book and said, `Will you be a den leader?' "

The last 15 years have infused the district with immigrant communities who aren't familiar with Scouting. And kids in Latino and African-American communities might simply feel the organization isn't for them when they don't see their friends wearing the tan-and-olive Boy Scout garb and recruiters look nothing like them.

"They might walk into blond, white America and say, `Man, this is where I get off,' " says Ricardo Aguirre, who lectures on Chicano heritage to Latino students in Seattle. "That's what kids do."

Which is why the Chief Seattle Council relies so heavily on partner organizations such as Seattle Buddhist Church and Japanese Baptist Church to attract boys who might not be involved as Scouts otherwise.

That's true at Brighton Presbyterian, where 16-year-old Thuc Nguyen was one of two Troop 286 members to attend the national Boy Scout Jamboree in Bowling Green, Va., last month. He says there's a reason his compass pointed him toward this troop.

"We learn about our history," Nguyen says. "Our language is getting better. Those are the very things we don't want to lose. It's changed most of us. We've become better people."