Girl Scouts of Jamaica

When Seton met Baden-Powell, he shared his ideas on scout craft with him. In August 1907 Baden-Powell held a camp on Brownsea Island for twenty-two boys of mixed social background to test out the applicability of these ideas. In 1908, Seton received a letter from Baden-Powell stating that he was going ahead with his scheme for scouting, based very much on Seton's program. The Scout Association was formed and then registered in 1909. At that time Baden-Powell was still in full time service with the Army, and the officials left by Baden-Powell to run his organisation, were to the minds of some, too official. The fear of an infiltration by the National Service League (an organisation that was pro compulsory military conscription), was also a very real concern. With these two concerns the Battersea District Scouts seceded, and formed the British Boy Scouts under the leadership of Major W.G. Whitby.

Baden-Powell's London Commissioner, Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher Vane, reconciled the BBS as an affiliated organisation to Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts Association in October 1909. However, he was fired by the executive for taking this policy initiative instead of just being an inspector. Baden-Powell attempted to restore the Commissioner on his return but was unsuccessful. This led to the BBS disassociating from Baden-Powell's organisation. Vane was invited to be President of the BBS, and accepted, bringing with him most of the troops in the London area and the majority of those in Birmingham and the Midlands. By the end of 1909 there were both British Boy Scouts and British Girls Scouts. Baden-Powell started the Girl Guides Association in 1910. In the same year, in America, Seton and Daniel Carter Beard of the Sons of Daniel Boone (founded 1905) merged their associations to form the Boy Scouts of America. The Woodcraft Indians withdrew in 1915 when Seton was asked to step down as Chief Commissioner of the Boy Scouts, as he was not an American citizen at the time. From these two countries, the scouting movement spread quickly across the world.

Vane went on to found the first international scouting association, the Order of World Scouts, on November 11, 1911, and the Order of the Redeemer for all Scout Masters, in 1914. Subsequent international groups formed were the World Organisation of the Scout Movement in 1920, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in 1928, the Union Internationale des Guides et Scouts d’Europe in 1956, the Confederation Europeenne de Scoutisme in 1978, and the World Federation of Independent Scouts in 1996.