World Scouting experienced strong growth throughout the past triennium, adding new youth members and volunteers at all levels of the Movement and providing an opportunity for even more young people to experience Scouting’s transformative non-formal educational Youth Programme.
We welcomed three new Members Organizations (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Solomon Islands) to the Movement this triennium, bringing our membership to a total of 172 National Scout Organizations (NSOs) representing over 57 million Scouts in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide.
According to the recently published Membership Report, between 2015 and 2019 nearly 5 million young people became Scouts meaning that every minute at least 2.3 young people joined the Movement and said their Scout Promise for the first time. During this period WOSM also increased its global market share by 0.9% to stand at 3.61% of the world’s youth population.
Youth membership growth was recorded among girls and boys, with a significant growth improvement around the involvement of young female members.
With WOSM’s current growth rate of 12% between the period of 2015 and 2019, this brings us closer to our goal of impacting 100 million young people and delivering on Vision 2023 as our Strategy for Scouting. This is excellent progress despite the COVID-19 pandemic which significantly impacted Scouting’s membership growth and activities around the world.
Besides welcoming new members and the direct participation of young people in Youth Programme delivered by NSOs, Scouting also recorded outreach to over 12 million beneficiaries worldwide through various humanitarian, educational and social youth programmes.
The launch of a new digital Data Portal developed this past triennium, which consolidates key data and information about the Movement, is helping to improve WOSM’s understanding of membership growth and the impact of Scouting on young people, beneficiaries and communities.
Providing tailored services and support to NSOs
WOSM has enhanced our support and services provided to Member Organizations in the areas of sustainable membership growth, retention and recovery through innovative ideas and good practices.
Our approach to strengthening the capacity of NSOs has focused on championing an agenda for growth and providing direct tailored support to over 30 high-potential NSOs over an extended period. We worked with these Member Organizations to accelerate opportunities for their membership expansion by strengthening their capacity and implementing growth strategies which ultimately resulted in 70% of WOSM’s growth this triennium.
NSOs have also been assisted through the new WOSM Growth Service and the Re-Energising Scouting Fund to create country-specific strategies to maximise growth potential. Over 70 unique resources are available to NSOs on the topics of growth planning, as well as membership management, retention and recruitment.
For example in India, home to a fifth of the world’s youth and where more than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people are below the age of 25, the Bharat Scouts and Guides took advantage of WOSM Services to develop and implement a national growth strategy to equip the next generation of young leaders with the skills needed to be active global citizens.
Growing the impact of Scouting for the future
Our priority for the future remains achieving our goal of growing the impact of the Scout Movement to reach 100 million young people and beneficiaries by 2023. A heightened interest among young people in outdoor activities post-pandemic may help accelerate these ambitions. We are committed to maintaining a strong focus on growth as we work together to offer better Scouting to more young people.
Over the next triennium, our focus will remain on further strengthening membership retention, recruitment and growth in NSOs. This includes reaching out to offer direct support around developing post-COVID-19 recovery plans, guiding on the safe reopening of Scouting, implementing membership management systems, and running recruitment campaigns to recover lost membership.
By supporting NSOs in these areas, we can work together to achieve our aspirations for growth, while also better evaluating and measuring Scouting’s impact on youth members, beneficiaries, and communities.
Learn more about WOSM’s growth agenda and achievements in the WOSM Membership Report and the 2017-2021 Triennial Report.
