The Jarrah Scouts, and the archive that maps them

The group

The Jarrah Scouts Association, جمعية كشافة الجرّاح في لبنان, was founded in Beirut in 1937. For close to ninety years it has taken its members out to camp, hike and serve across Lebanon.

It is organised as scouting has long been organised: Cubs, Scouts and Rovers with their leaders, each section with its own camps, hikes and ceremonies, and the whole group together for the bigger days.

Its motto is the scout motto, كن مستعداً: be prepared.

Why an archive

Most of the group’s history was never written down. It lives in photographs kept in family albums, in the memory of the people who were there, and in stories retold at the next camp.

The archive gathers those pieces in one place and puts each one where it happened. Laid out year by year, they show the group moving across the country and across the decades, and they show the gaps too.

Where the records come from

From members, former members and their families. Anyone can add an event with its date, its place and its photographs.

Every submission is read by a volunteer from the group before it is published. That is a check on what belongs in a public record rather than proof of every detail: where a date or a place is uncertain, the record says so.

Three languages

The archive speaks Arabic, English and French, as the group does. Each event is shown in the language it was written in, with translations where the team has added them, and a browser that can translate offers to do the rest.

Who runs it

Volunteers from the group. Nothing on the site is sold, and nothing about the people who read it is collected.