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The Boy Scouts of America announced Tuesday it will change its name to Scouting America as it struggles to recover from a sexual abuse scandal involving its adult scout leaders.
The organization said the change will take effect on Feb. 8, 2025, the 115th anniversary of its founding. The BSA describes itself as "the nation's foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training," with its mission "to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes."
The name change is the latest effort by the BSA to brand itself as a more inclusive organization after years of declining membership. The group began allowing girls to join the Cub Scouts, its program for children ages 7 to 10 years old, in 2018.
The next year it opened its flagship Boy Scout program to older girls and changed its name to Scouts BSA.
BSA says more than 176,000 girls have joined Scouts BSA since the changes, with more than 6,000 obtaining the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout.
The organization has also lifted its ban on openly gay youth and openly gay adult leaders over the last decade.
The BSA is under a bankruptcy reorganization plan that allows it to operate while spending $2.4 billion to compensate more than 82,000 men who sued the organization, claiming they were sexually abused during their scouting years.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.