The Boy Scouts of America is beginning to reach out to Hispanic youngsters through advertisements, bumper stickers, and handbooks that have been translated into Spanish as a way of recruiting scouts from the nation’s fastest-growing minority group, reports The Boston Globe.

The recruitment efforts come at a time when the organization’s membership has dropped by 10 percent, the newspaper notes.

Through “Los Boy Scouts,” a campaign started two years ago, the organization is trying to combat its image as an “Anglo” club, which the group says is how most Latino families view the organization. Along with Spanish-language ads and literature, the organization is offering soccer programs to children of immigrants from Central and South America.

The organization says it does not yet have any reliable national data to show whether the effort has been successful, but in several Massachusetts towns, the results are promising.

In Framingham, Mass. the local Scouts group has enrolled more than 150 children, most of them Brazilian, in a year-round soccer program. In Lawrence, Mass., a predominantly Latino town, membership in scouting programs has risen from 53 to 250.

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