By Mark E. Vogler , Staff Writer, Eagle-Tribune, July 9, 2007

LAWRENCE - This city's once floundering Boy Scout program has been rejuvenated thanks to an outreach effort into the Hispanic community.

The number of Scouts in Lawrence has expanded from 53 to 250 over the past two years, making the city a national model on how to spark interest in Scouting programs among Hispanic youths.

By way of comparison, Lawrence, with a population of about 72,000, once lagged behind Plaistow, N.H., a town of about 8,000 people, which had 61 Scouts two years ago. Plaistow's membership has increased to 85 over the same to years.

"The majority of these new Scouts are Hispanic, and it is important that we understand and respond to the needs of the Latino community," John Skelton, president of the Yankee Clipper Council, said of the membership surge in Lawrence.

The Haverhill-based Yankee Clipper Council serves more than 9,000 members ages 6 to 18 in 52 communities in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.

There are still more Scouts registered in Andover (422) and Haverhill (365), communities that experienced modest growth - 9 percent and 12 percent respectively.

But Lawrence's enrollment actually overtook North Andover (215) and Methuen (240), both of which experienced more than a 20 percent drop.

The strategy to make Scouting more relevant to the Hispanic community involved the creation of a bilingual Web site, program and training materials in Spanish, bilingual leader training, the hiring of bilingual and bicultural employees to address the needs of Latinos, and the appointment of bilingual and bicultural members to the council's executive board.

Lawrence's Hispanic community accounts for between 60 percent and 70 percent of the city's overall population.

The recruitment efforts were so successful that Boy Scouts of America executives from Dallas and Washington, D.C., visited the city to study Lawrence's methods as a national model. The council also earned the Yankee Clipper Council the Regional President's Scoutreach Award for 2006.

Lawrence was one of only eight communities across the country to earn the award.

"The city was also the only community in the Eastern U.S., the only community that serves a non-Mexican-American population and the only one that was not a major metropolitan community to win this award," said City Attorney Charles Boddy, who has been recognized locally and by council officials as a key catalyst to the renaissance of scouting in Lawrence.

Boddy is a Lawrence native who earned his Eagle Scout badge while growing up in the city. Though he has moved away from the area, he maintains local ties to Scouting as a member of the council's executive board and as district chairman.

"The increase in Scouting membership in Lawrence was dramatic," Boddy said.

"But part of the reason was that Lawrence was so underserved for so many years that the opportunity for expansion was really unlimited."

Boddy cited the involvement of Latino church leaders, including Pastor Nelson Gonzalez at Iglesia Evangelica Hispana, Father Jorge Reyes at St. Mary's of the Assumption Catholic Church and Pastor Victor Jarvis at Iglesia Ebenezer as crucial to unit organizational and recruitment efforts.

In the spring, the council hired Wendy Perez of Lawrence to work as a special liaison to the Hispanic community. A key part of her job is to assist Lawrence and Latino families who wish to join a Scout troop.

But she will also help improve communications between the Boy Scouts office and Latinos living throughout the council.