Talk:Boy Scouts of the Philippines

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	Boy Scouts of the Philippines is part of the Scouting WikiProject, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Scouting and Guiding on the Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to boy and girl organizations, WAGGGS and WOSM organizations as well as those not so affiliated, country and region-specific topics, and anything else related to Scouting. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
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The contents of Scouting around the world were merged into Boy Scouts of the Philippines and they now redirect here. For the contribution history and old versions of the merged article please see its history; for its talk page, see here

Scouting was first introduced in the Philippines by the United States, around 1914, 4 years after the Boy Scouts of America was founded.

The first all Filipino Scout Troop was organized in Zamboanga by a young lieutenant by the name of Sherman l. Kiser through the sponsorship of Mrs. Caroline S. Spencer, an American who was in the Philippines doing Charity work. The troop was composed of 26 Muslim boys.

In 1923, the Philippine Council-BSA was formed through the efforts of the Rotary Club of Manila mainly to launch Scouting as a nationwide movement and to provide guidance to the troops which had been independently organized throughout the country. 1923 is the official founding of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines.

In October 1936, president Manuel L.Quezon issued an act which made the Boy Scout movement a public corporation, "…to promote through organization and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train themselves in Scout craft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance and kindred virtues, using the methods which are in common use by Boy Scouts."

[edit] Hilary Saint George Saunders, The Left Handshake, 1948

The General 06:55, 24 May 2007 (UTC) Chris 01:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC) If you can find a way to put this in:

(World War II)

News from the Philippines came in but slowly after the war. The Scouts there suffered great privations and many hardships. On the outbreak of war most Philippine Scouts bad undergone some form of training for emergency services. This they began to use to good effect. In Bataan, for example, they took on the duty of directing the traffic, and on the 27th December, Scout Joson, remaining at his post, was killed in an air raid. Another, Scout Montilla of the 3rd Y.M.C.A. Troop in Manila, had lost his life a fortnight before, thrusting women and children into a shelter during a raid on Cavite.

In general, the Scouts' most urgent duty and that performed most successfully was in helping a terrified population to avoid the extremes of panic and giving special succor to about fifty women and 120 children, the wives and dependents of Philippine soldiers summoned hurriedly to the Colors. Boy Scouts of Dansalan helped these unhappy women and children on their arduous road from their homes to the hills in the north. They moved only a few hours in advance of the Japanese, and eventually reached Liang after traversing malaria-ridden forests and streams teeming with reptiles, leeches and mosquitoes. Their refuge lay at the foot of a mountain surrounded on three sides by forests and on the fourth by a crocodile-infested river. The Scouts built shelters for the women and children and cleared the ground to grow crops. In a few weeks they had transformed this piece of Jungle into a village of nondescript huts, where these refugees lived for many months, succored and looked after by their young protectors. Gradually as life grew more normal even under the occupation, they found their way back to their own homes. But "in that now deserted village you will find spoons, saucers and cooking utensils made from coconut shells, slippers and bags of abaca twine, rows and rows of garden plots now overrun by weeds, and wells dug deep in the earth... all the results of skills learned by boys in Scouting." So writes a Filipino. He goes on to say that in unspectacular but important ways the Scouts throughout the Philippines helped the various Resistance Movements by feeding guerrillas, carrying messages and receiving and distributing supplies landed by American submarines. The most noted in this work was a young Rover, aged nineteen, Jorge Fajardo by name, of Troop 61 of Manila, an expert signaler who maintained communications in Morse with submarines and thus prevented many tons of essential supplies from falling into Japanese hands.

After the liberation the Scouts in the Philippines did what their brothers were doing elsewhere all over the world. They collected food, clothing and medicine for destitute civilians and were used by the Civilian Affairs Units of the United States Army for the orderly distribution of relief. They also collected magazines, books and newspapers for the troops, and took care, by the manufacture of abaca handbags and belts, which the Americans bought eagerly and sent home as souvenirs, to relieve them of as much money as they could, which they devoted to charitable purposes.

By far the most remarkable exploit performed by a Filipino Scout was that of Valerino Abello, a member of Troop 11 of Leyte. As a Scout he had learned signaling, and on the day of the attack on Leyte, this accomplishment was to stand him and the American invading forces in good stead. The Japanese had massed the most formidable of their defenses along the eastern coast of the island and they stretched from the Ambao Mountains to the San Juanico Strait, which divides Leyte from Samar. The defenses included tank traps, pillboxes, slit trenches, barbed wire and individual foxholes, and were manned by a full Japanese division. On the seashore and at certain points in the hills behind, batteries of guns and mortars had been installed.

Having served as a capataz, or foreman, over the Filipino laborers who had been forced to build these defenses, Abello possessed detailed knowledge of their general disposition, and the many strong points they contained. On the 20th October 1944, he was at Telegrafo, near Toloso, when looking out to sea he saw a long line of warships moving into position. A moment later heavy shells began to burst near him and he ran at once to the beach, where he was joined by two comrades, Anterio Junua and Vicente Cononigo. By now the bombardment was at its full height, and large and medium-caliber shells were falling along the defenses. It was obvious that this was the preliminary bombardment not of a raid but of a landing in force.

Abello began to signal, repeating over and over again, "Please let me direct the shelling." The waving flags were presently seen and a destroyer closer in shore than the great ships flashed back, "Come immediately. Waiting." The three men jumped on board a native outrigger canoe and paddled out towards the destroyer. They were closing her when shells from a Japanese battery burst into the water nearby and upset the canoe. They took to the sea, swam towards the destroyer and were dragged, exhausted and dripping, on to her decks. Abello was taken at once to the bridge where, giving the Scout's salute, he said, "I know where every main defensive position on shore is to be found, for I helped to build them." The destroyer signaled to the flagship, and soon Abello, from her bridge, was directing the bombardment. New targets were given to the gunners and, most important of all from the point of view of Abello, Tolosa and the other villages and towns within the defense area were spared the hail of fire which fell upon the beaches. One by one each strong point was shelled in turn, and two hours later the assaulting troops headed by the famous Marines, swept in in their landing craft and set foot on shore.

With the noise of battle roaring, echoing among the palm trees and drowning the voice of the surf on Leyte, let us leave this story of suffering and heroism imposed by war upon half the peoples of the world. For five long years and more their fate was hard, their ordeal grim, their lives a dull pain exchanged at moments for a sharp agony. Alleviation was small, consolation meager. For those in bondage the inevitable ills of life are made sharper and more difficult to bear because the corresponding joys are lacking. Yet their fate would have been harder, their lot more onerous, their lives more hopeless had Boy Scouts not come to their rescue. The tale, plain and unadorned, of what they did has in part been set down. More will presently be told as fresh evidence of what the Scouts accomplished in those stricken countries comes to light. Yet it will never be told in full. Too many, who suffered and received comfort, are now dead and their testimony lies with them in their graves. But enough remains and has been set down to make it possible to maintain with no fear of contradiction that, when the time of testing came, the Scouts and Scouters of Baden-Powell proved not the happy-go-lucky children or the figures of lath and plaster their enemies would have them to be, but boys of true and solid worth, young Paladins with souls of steel and hearts brimming with unselfish devotion.

Nearly twenty-three centuries have passed since certain old men stood upon a stage in Athens cried out that love was unconquerable in battle. Scouts the whole world over provided, in six years of the greatest tribulation, the latest and the clearest proof that those words are true.

[edit] Don bosco catholic scouting movement

I don't think the entry for Don Bosco entry should even show on this article. We'll end up with all the Scouting groups placing descriptions about themselves. Mang Kiko 05:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I have already removed the article. I am very sorry for that. The General 06:55, 24 May 2007 (UTC)