Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion is launching a series of studies examining the role of Scouting in developing and sustaining what social scientists call “prosocial behavior.”

Ingredients for a moving, heartwarming documentary film:
Energetic, determined Scouts from Troop 759 in New York City’s Harlem
A wise and caring Scoutmaster
Two skilled filmmakers (one non-Scout, one Eagle Scout)

The result is 759: Boy Scouts of Harlem, a film that follows four of the Harlem Scouts from the skyscrapers and teeming streets of New York City to the vernal woods of Camp Keowa in upstate New York.

Boy Scouts of Harlem is the brainchild of directors Justin Szlasa (rhymes with “plaza”) and Jake Boritt, who also supplied the film’s often stunning camera work. For Szlasa, an Eagle Scout from a longtime Scouting family, the film was a way to salute an organization that did much to shape his early life. “I really felt obliged to give back and spread the word” about Scouting, he says.

The filmmakers chose Troop 759, which meets at the Church of the Master in Harlem. That’s where they met Scoutmaster Okpoti Sowah, a Ghanan-born graduate of Columbia University who has been a Scout leader since 1978, and new Scout Keith Dozier, who gets plenty of screen time as he faces the challenges of Camp Keowa: the climbing tower, strange noises in the night, and repeated attempts to become a swimmer.

READ MORE: http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/1003/d-trailhead.html