BOYS STATE & NATION

Premier Summer Program for JuniorsPP

Evergreen Boys State aims to simulate and emulate Washington State government through a fun and engaging summer program. Participants will have an opportunity to construct local, county and state governments.

Activities include running for office, court proceedings, creating and enforcing laws, pizza parties, celebrations, and recreational programs. You’ll hone your public speaking skills, experience how government works, get inspired by guest speakers, have fun and make new friends for life.

Program Goals & Objectives

A program of this scope encompasses many important objectives. Those which we, The American Legion, feel are most important and those for which we strive the hardest are:

• To develop civic leadership and pride in young American citizenship.
  It is our earnest hope that each young man attending Evergreen Boys State will return to his community a better citizen. We desire to arouse in him, a personal desire to demonstrate this fact by his willingness to make civic contributions that will help to make his community a better place in which all may live.
• To arouse a keen interest in the detailed study of our government.
  Here we desire to create more than just a passive interest in the actual study of government; we strive to create an interest that will be born of the desire for knowledge.
• To develop an understanding of American traditions and belief in the United States of America.
  Here we desire to impress upon the young men the glorious traditions which have made this country what it is today. To demonstrate freedom is maintained by the labors of those who believe in building a better Country.
• To arouse in the young citizens a determination to maintain our form of government.
  This we attempt to accomplish in many ways but primarily by bringing them into the full realization of how wonderful it is to be an American!

The final two objectives are taken from the Preamble to the Constitution of The American Legion.

• “To inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state and nation.”
• “To safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy.”