A. Two worldwide youth organizations that have been popular in Canada for more than a century are Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. Scouting groups started up in Ontario and Nova Scotia shortly after Lord Baden Powell founded the Boy Scouts Association in England in 1907. Around the same time, the Canadian Girl Guides Company began in Ontario. Both groups organize sports, games, and outdoor activities, such as camping, in order to promote the emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of youths. Both attract enthusiastic leaders, usually former Guides or Scouts themselves.

B. Scouts and Guides have similar organizational structures and goals. They serve children and young adults within the ages of 5 to 17 in five separate age groups. No evaluation or criteria other than age affects moving from one group to another. Whereas Guides attracts ages 7 to 11, Scouts is popular with ages 5 to 10. By the teenage years, interest wanes significantly. Since 1992, all sections of Scouts have been coed, whereas Guides continues to be exclusively girls. Guides enrolments didn’t suffer from Scouts broadening their market; however, Scouts experienced criticism for including girls.

C. Membership was brisk through much of the twentieth century, although it has declined significantly in recent years. In Canada, Girl Guides experienced a membership decline of more than 50% by 2012. Scouts Canada reached its peak in 1965 with 285,000 members but has since decreased by 70%. Why were these programs so interesting to youths in the past? For many it was a way to make friends, have fun, and enjoy the outdoors. It was camping and ghost stories, earning badges, attending national and international jamborees, and wearing a uniform that identified you as one of the group. The youths of the twenty-first century are more interested in internet-based activities. Both Guides and Scouts are now trying to adapt to the interests of today’s youth.

D. Most of the Scouts and Guides groups are run by dedicated adults who go through an interview, reference check, and police check, followed by a training program. It’s not an easy volunteer job, requiring the planning of weekly meetings, organizing camping trips, managing young personalities, and attending periodic training weekends. In the past, parents were often the leaders, but nowadays they are too busy balancing jobs, chores, and their children’s sports or music events. It remains to be seen whether these two immensely popular youth organizations of the twentieth century will endure through the twenty-first.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.