Scouting group Be Pals-Prinses Juliana in The Hague is marking its 95th anniversary with a reunion on Saturday 10 October, from 15:30 at its clubhouse on the Laan van Poot in the Vogelwijk.
The group has 110 youth members and around 30 adults in 2026, and its chair, Anke van Alphen, 61, has been involved since she was seven.
Two couples who met at the group
Claudia van der Toorn, 59, joined at six.
Her aunt Ellen was a Brownie leader there, and her parents ran a greengrocer’s on the Beeklaan, so a Saturday morning at scouting suited the family well.
Jari van der Toorn, also 59, heard about it from a young relative who was a member.
“My mother thought it would be good for me, because I would learn discipline and learn to obey. So I joined at ten.”
They met when they were 14. “Because of the merger of Be Pals and Prinses Juliana, the boys and the girls came together.
We were in the first mixed patrol,” Jari says. Asked whether the discipline ever took, he laughs.
“No, that was not what it was about at all. It was a really nice, new world for me, in which anything was possible.”
Both are still members. “You learn to deal with other people, in good times and bad.
You learn to be there for each other and to get to know each other properly,” Jari says.
“Our own children were in scouting too,” Claudia adds.
“You do nice things in nature, you are outside, you learn to be independent and you are there for each other.”
When they were leaders, teachers sometimes approached them about a difficult pupil, and so did parents dealing with something similar.
Those children often did very well at the group even when they were being bullied at school. These days the two count as seniors.
“Yes, in scouting you are already old once you are over thirty,” Claudia says, laughing.
A plate of chili con carne
Anke van Alphen has known Claudia since she was seven, from scouting.
She grew up in the Maranathakerk in The Hague, where her mother was the verger. “The girl guides always had their meetings there.
I found that tremendously interesting and was always hanging around. So I became a member, at seven.” She is now the group’s chair.
Her husband Johan, 63, was first at another scouting group in The Hague, left after his studies because he expected to move away, and signed up again with Be Pals-Prinses Juliana when he found a job in the city.
He remembers exactly how things started between them, on a camping weekend in Wassenaar on the Raaphorst estate.
“Anke had to go out in the evening to a meeting of the scouting band.
I put aside a plate of chili con carne for her, so she would have something to eat when she got back.
Yes, the way to a woman’s heart really is through her stomach.” Anke agrees that was the moment. “Exactly that.
And so on 12 March 1988 we started a relationship. We have now been married for 32 years.” Any regrets?
“Certainly not.”
The two couples belong to a close group of around 14 friends who still do things together through scouting.
“With our old codgers’ scouting we still go camping together, to have unexpected experiences,” Johan says.
“That varies from a simple walk on the beach to a Sinterklaas celebration or all of us camping in Drenthe.
Or we rent a clubhouse in Luxembourg and go walking. It is also very practical: if someone in our group moves house, we come and help.”
Turnout and scouting history
Asked what has kept the group going for so long, Anke points to that sense of belonging.
“It is a headstrong group that does things its own way.
And there is room for everyone, for birds of every feather.” About 60 people have registered for the reunion so far and former members can still sign up.
Privacy law means the group may no longer keep old members’ details, so many are hard or impossible to reach.
“We are really looking forward to that reunion,” Anke says. There was one 20 years ago as well, where she ran into a girl she had once led.
The woman said she never went to reunions but had been determined to come to this one.
“This is the only place where I was never bullied, here I was always safe,” she told her.
“It is so important as a scouting group that you can offer children a safe place.
That is the greatest reward you can get for your volunteer work.”
Scouting was founded in the Netherlands in 1910, a spokeswoman for Scouting Nederland said, at a time when the country was divided along denominational lines, with Catholic scouting clubs, Protestant clubs and others.
The federations behind them continued together as Scouting Nederland from 1973.
Many clubs closed during the Second World War, when scouting was banned, although some simply carried on, as this one did.
A few have reached a hundred years, but 95 is uncommon.
