Wood Badge courses teach Scout leadership skills and instil an ideological bond and commitment to the organizations.

Early Wood Badge beads came from a necklace that Baden-Powell claimed to have taken from a deserted Zulu mountain stronghold while on a failed military campaign to capture Dinizulu in Zululand (now part of South Africa).

[4] In 1919, Baden-Powell threaded beads from the necklace he had taken onto leather thong he claimed had been given to him by an elderly South African in Mafeking and called it the Wood Badge.

[8] The patch of Maclaren clan tartan honours William de Bois Maclaren, The Boy Scouts Association commissioner who donated £7000 to The Boy Scouts Association in 1919 to purchase Gilwell Park as a leader training centre and an additional £3000 for improvements to the house on the estate.

Originally, the scarf was made entirely of triangular pieces of the tartan but its expense forced the adoption of the current design.

[6][1] The Gilwell woggle is a braided leather two or three-strand Turk's head knot, which has no beginning and no end[dubious – discuss] and symbolizes the commitment to the Scout Movement.

First designed in the early 1920s by British Scouter Bill Shankley, making a Turk's head knot woggle was part of the leader training scheme by 1926.

One-on-one work with an assigned troop guide helps each participant to reflect on what they have learned, so that he can better prepare an individualized "ticket".

Part of the transformative power of the Wood Badge experience is the effective use of metaphor and tradition to reach both heart and mind.

Participants apply themselves and their new knowledge and skills to the completion of items designed to strengthen the individual's leadership and the home unit's organizational resilience in a project or "ticket".

The ticket consists of specific goals that must be accomplished within a specified time, often 18 months due to the large amount of work involved.

The axe and log logo was conceived by the first Camp Chief, Francis Gidney, in the early 1920s to distinguish Gilwell Park from the Scout Headquarters.

Gidney wanted to associate Gilwell Park with the outdoors and Scoutcraft rather than the business or administrative Headquarters offices.

Scouters present at the original Wood Badge courses regularly saw axe blades masked for safety by being buried in a log.

Baden-Powell first encountered the kudu horn at the Battle of Shangani, where he discovered how the Matabele warriors used it to quickly spread a signal of alarm.

[20] Wolf Cub leaders briefly followed a separate training system beginning in 1922, in which they were awarded the Akela Badge on completion.

He brought in many things he learned in Gilwell Park about International and British Scouting but it was not an official Wood Badge training.

Scouts Canada requires that Scouters (volunteers) are required to complete an online Wood Badge Part I Course,[26] and are encouraged to complete a Wood Badge Part II program that includes self-directed learning, conducted through mentorship and coaching in addition to traditional courses and workshops.

[27] Upon completion of the Wood Badge Part II[28] program a volunteer is awarded their "beads" and the Gilwell Neckerchief.

[32] The First Wood Badge training of the Tily eto Madagasikara, known as the first Lasy Ravinala, was held in 1957 at Dinta Ambohidratrimo, Antananarivo, led by the first malagasy Chief Commissioner Samuel Randria.

The first Wood Badge training in the Netherlands was held in July 1923 by Scoutmaster Jan Schaap, on Gilwell Ada's Hoeve, Ommen.

Today, Wood Badge courses are held at the Philippine Scouting Center for the Asia-Pacific Region, at the foothills of Mount Makiling, Los Baños, Laguna province.