Portugal
General Robert Stephenson Smith Baden-Powell (1857-1941) was born 150 years ago in London. Following a heroic performance in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), fought between descendants of Dutch and French settlers and the British army, he wrote a manual for army scouts with guidelines on camping and survival in inhospitable regions. Seeing some boys playing games based on the book one day inspired him in 1907 to organise a camp for twenty boys on Brownsea Island in the English Channel, where he taught first-aid, observational and safety skills for living in town and in the wilderness.
It was the first scout camp in history and the origins of the Scout Movement, which quickly spread from British territories in the five continents throughout the world.
Scouting arrived in Portugal in 1913 via Hong Kong and Macau, where it had begun in 1911, when returning naval officer Álvaro de Mello Machado created the Associação dos Escoteiros de Portugal (AEP - Portuguese Scouting Association). This was followed ten years later by the Corpo Nacional de Escutas (CNE - National Scout Corps). These two associations plus Associação Guias de Portugal (AGP - Guide Association of Portugal), for girls, formed in 1931, are members of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement founded in 1920, currently based in Geneva, and of which the AEP was among the founders. Their common aim is to educate young people through practical team activities, in particular outdoors, enabling them to take charge of their personal growth and develop values of fraternity, loyalty, altruism, responsibility, respect and discipline.
The Federação Escotista de Portugal (FEP, Scouting Federation of Portugal) is the national Scouting federation of Portugal. Scouting in Portugal started in 1911 and was among the founders of the World Organization of the Scout Movement in 1922. The present federation was founded in 1928. It serves about 80,000 members of both sexes .
When Portuguese Scouting started in 1911, many associations appeared, however, only two of them survived: Unido dos Adueiros de Portugal (which became extinct in 1930) and the Associação dos Escoteiros de Portugal (AEP), still operational. The Corpo Nacional de Escutas - Escutismo Católico Português (CNE) is another Scouting organization that is active today. It was founded in 1923, and is sponsored by the Catholic Church. Today, there are also some organizations besides the CNE and the AEP, like the Associação Guias de Portugal (AGP), but they are not members of the federation.