Robert Fournel couldn't believe it. A Boy Scout in his youth, Fournel wanted his 9-year-old son to enjoy the same experience. But the 31-year-old father recently learned that the boy's Santa Ana elementary school had no Cub Scout troop--and hardly any other parent seemed to care.

The reason, he discovered, was that many of the parents had immigrated to the United States from Cambodia, Vietnam and Mexico, foreign lands where the Scouts are far from a fixture.

So in December, Fournel started a Cub Scout troop. The pack, which quickly expanded from the original eight boys to the current 20, is a medley of ethnic diversity. Today, the Scout leader is struggling to cope, relying on some parents to serve as interpreters for others.

Fournel's fledgling Cub Scout troop is a small part of an uphill battle being waged by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in Orange County to recruit members from the region's burgeoning minority population.

Long a bastion of white, middle-class suburbia, Scouting is taking bold steps to appeal to ethnic minorities, who officials say stand to benefit from the structured recreation and educational experience that the organization offers.

Advocates of Scouting say it can help immigrant families meld into their communities and learn to value volunteerism and community service, concepts that are often foreign to their cultures but play a prominent role in the United States.

Moreover, they warn that unless ethnic minorities are aggressively recruited, the 80-year-old tradition of American Scouting, which stresses values of self-discipline and duty owed to God and country, could begin to fade.

"We don't want to shrink in size and become an exclusive organization," said Mona Ware, executive director of the Girl Scout Council of Orange County.

To tap into the minority community, both the Boy and Girl Scouts have translated manuals and handbooks into languages such as Spanish and Vietnamese. They've hired more bilingual staff. The Orange County Girl Scout Council has even installed special telephone lines at its headquarters in Costa Mesa that answer questions in Spanish and Vietnamese.

"Scouting is a family program. We need the parents today and not \o7 manana \f7 when they learn the language," said Luis Gellegos, director of Hispanic Emphasis at the Boy Scouts national headquarters in Irving, Tex.