[2] The organization surpassed its purpose as a cultural institution that was intended to serve as the ideological counterpart of school, and served as a paramilitary group (training for future assignments in the Italian Army), as well as education in the career of choice, technology (including postschool courses for legal adults), or education related to home and family (solely for the girls).

Moreover, the GIL took charge of all activities initiated by schools, and pressured teachers to enlist all students.

Aside from the usual "Fascist Saturdays", children would spend their summers in camps (which included the national-level Campi Dux, reunions of Balilla and Avanguardisti).

Male children enrolled wore a uniform adapted from that of the Blackshirts: the eponymous black shirt, the fez of Arditi tradition, grey-green trousers, black fasces emblems, and azure handkerchiefs (i.e.: in the national colour of Italy).

When Italy entered World War II, members of the GIL who were above the age of eighteen were called up to fight in the Royal Army of Italy but in 1943, after a string of defeats culminating in the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland, boys aged sixteen and over were called up to fight, until the Armistice of Cassibile.