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Purpose and Mission


The back of a Crew's trailer.
The purpose of the Corps of Discovery (COD) is to promote a stand alone servant leadership and service program within our home communities and religious institutions that use youth groups, especially Venturing Crews, Sea Scout Ships, Explorer Posts, and Scout Troops, can use to enhance their program and to service regardless of the endorsement of any national organization.  The mission is to provide servant leadership to youth and adult members of youth groups through leadership training, program development, and service projects.

The COD is not an honor society so much as it is a unit, district, council, region, and national based co-educational Service Society.  To be a member, one must simply be willing to commit to doing service, and ask to join the Corps of Discovery.  The COD takes its name and symbolism from Lewis and Clark's historic Voyage of Discovery.

Craig Murray and Nik Stanosheck have put together the Third Edition of the Corps of Discovery Guidebook which you can download as a PDF file; COD Guidebook 3rd edition (posted 7/23/19).

A link that came to our attention is a short talk about the original Corps of Discovery trek:  history.com/topics/lewis-and-clark.