Ferenc Farkas de Kisbarnak - Scouting and Officers Training School

Scouting and Officers Training School

In 1933, he was chief organizer and General Camp Manager of the 4th World Scout Jamboree hosted by the Hungarian Boy Scouts at Gödöllő, Hungary, alongside Hungary's Chief Scout and future Prime Minister Pál Teleki. A Catholic, in 1938 Farkas was the chief organizer of an World Eucharistic Congress in Budapest on May 25–29, 1938 at which time he created a lifelong relationship with the Pope and the Vatican.

In the same year he assumed command of the Royal Ludovika Akadémia (officer training school) which had been founded in 1872. Among the officers he brought to the Akadémia was 21-year-old Béla Bánáthy, who Farkas had met as a 14-year-old youth at the 1933 Jamboree. He requested a volunteer to teach leadership at the academy, and Bánáthy was selected. He also asked Bánáthy to organize a Scout Troop for the young men, 19 years and older, which was a common practice within the Hungarian Scout Association at the time. Farkas served as commander of the Royal Ludovika Akadémia through 1943. Banathy served most of the war under Farkas and when it ended, escaped first to Austria and later the United States. He was inspired by his attendance at the 4th World Jamboree where he met Farkas and his Scouting experience teaching leadership at the Ludovika Akadémia. In 1958 he founded the White Stag Leadership Development Program in Monterey, California which has continually taught leadership to youth since then.