The Boy Scouts of America reached a notable milestone in 2000.

As a new century dawned, it registered its 100 millionth youth member, Mario Castro of New York.

The same year, the BSA set—and reached—a four-year goal of logging 200 million service hours by its members. In 2004, the BSA created the Good Turn for America program, partnering with The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, and Habitat for Humanity to address the issues of hunger, homelessness/inadequate housing, and poor health.

ArrowCorps5

Many of those projects occurred in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. However, the decade’s biggest service project was ArrowCorps5. During the summer of 2008, 3,800 members of the Order of the Arrow, Scouting’s national honor society, contributed more than $5 million worth of labor to five national forests. It was the BSA’s largest national service project since World War II and the largest such project ever to benefit the USDA Forest Service.

Good Turn for America

The BSA issued the twelfth edition of The Boy Scout Handbook in 2009. Printed on recycled paper made using environmentally friendly processes, the handbook features artwork and quotations from previous editions as a nod to the past, and introduces an interactive iPhone application to align with the times. Just as the previous eleven editions did, the new handbook is certain to inspire today’s Scouts to undertake lives of adventure, leadership, and service. It is they who will write the story of Scouting’s second century. 

 
(Primary sources: BSA 2010 Decades Fact Sheet - 2000)