Jerusalem 1924 The beginning of our Association goes back to the year 1924 in Jerusalem. In the following the foundation took place in 1928 in Galilee as group members of the Palestine Association. In 1951 the group leaders of the Catholic Scouts in Haifa, Nazareth, Shafa-Amr (Shfaram) and the Galilee villages, where the majority of the Catholic Arabs live, met together and founded the Catholic Scout Association in Israel.

The CSAI is open to other confessions: Christian Orthodox, Protestants, Baptisms, Druze and Moslems are members and engages in interreligious dialogue. The Scout Movement is connected to the three Catholic Churches – Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Maronites. Their bishops are our honorary presidents.

During the years 1951 untill 1987 the leaders used to meet in different locations. There was no room for the headquarters of the Association. Furthermore the means of the finances were too little to organize national Scout camps or Scout leader training courses. With the help of our friends from the dpsg (German Catholic Scout Association), the construction of the Nazareth Scout Center started in 1985. It was officially handed over to the CSAI in 1987.

TODAY

Today, the CSAI consists of 2500 members in 16 groups spread out in the Galilee, Yaffo Tel Aviv, Haifa and in the Upper Galilee near Lebanon. The CSAI is coeducative. Boys and girls grow up, play, discuss, create, live, go camping, take a hike, pretend they were actors, are a vibrant part of the local church and community and stand up for their rights together.

	The different age groups are: 6 – 12 cubscouts 12 – 16 scouts 16 – 21 rovers

Scouting at CSAI is all about being on a journey together. While nature and adventure, being on a journey, playing games and sports, knowing about knots and first aid, improvising without electricity and sitting at night time outside in the light of a gaslamp is typical for scouting worldwide, one specialty here is our love to marching music. Most characteristic for the CSAI is the time that we spend with eachother: precious time to get to know each other.

Asked about our dreams, our answers are: increase exchange between scouts in Israel more inter-religious activities to get to know each other more activities at the NSC set-up a scouting for coexistence programm create more scouting for peace activities participate more at local parishes increase number of CSAI members co-operate with other religious groups