This is probably the most repeated question in the movement, and also one of the worst answered. You type "how many honors exist" and get numbers ranging from 250 to over 500, almost never saying which edition of the Manual they're talking about or when it was checked. The result is a director planning the year with an old list and a Pathfinder thinking a patch disappeared.
So let's get straight to the point, with a date and a source. The South American Division (SAD) Honors Manual — the headquarters that runs the program in Brazil and seven other South American countries — got a new edition in August 2025. The Manual's own introduction states 518 honors and 16 Master Awards, in 370 pages. That's what we verified on 12/07/2026.
Below you'll find the table with the 10 areas, the codes that appear in each honor's number, and what each area covers. And, along the way, an honest explanation of why loose lists floating around the internet never match. If you're still getting a handle on the concept, it's worth starting with what honors are.
So, how many Pathfinder honors exist?
There are 518 honors and 16 Master Awards. That's the number stated in the introduction of the South American Division Honors Manual, in its new edition. The Manual is an official standard of the SAD itself; the company that sells it is Editora Sobre Tudo, an official supplier listed by the Pathfinder Ministry, and it's that company's product listing that records the publication date, August 2025, with 370 pages and spiral binding.
| Data | Current Manual |
|---|---|
| Honors | 518 |
| Master Awards | 16 |
| Subject areas | 10 (plus the Master Awards block, code ME) |
| Pages | 370 |
| Edition | New edition, published in August 2025 |
| Where to buy the printed copy | Editora Sobre Tudo (official supplier listed by the SAD), R$ 132,64 |
| Date checked | 12/07/2026 |
Notice a distinction a lot of people confuse: a Master Award is not an honor. The Master Award is the recognition given to someone who completes a defined set of honors on the same topic. And notice the detail: there are 16 Master Awards for 10 areas, meaning there isn't one Master Award per area. Some topics are subsets within one area — the old Nature Master Award, for example, was split into Zoology and Botany in the 2012 revision, both fed by Nature Study honors. That's why the 16 Master Awards are listed separately from the 518, not added to them. If this point still raises questions in your club, it's worth reading how Master Awards work.
It's also worth noting: no open page on the SAD's website prominently publishes this updated total. The number comes from the Manual's own introduction text, reproduced by outlets and specialized materials within the movement. It's the best source available today, and it's the one we're citing.
What are the 10 areas and what does each one cover?
Every honor carries a code that starts with its area's abbreviation. That's how the Manual is organized, and that's how you can tell, in two seconds, where a patch a Pathfinder just earned comes from. This is the canonical table for the current edition:
| Code | Area | What it covers | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| AD | ADRA | Humanitarian action, service, and disaster response | Hunger Relief, Community Service, Literacy, Conflict Resolution |
| HM | Arts and Crafts | Working with your hands and artistic expression | Crochet, Ceramics, Origami, Amigurumi, Digital Art, Lettering |
| AA | Agricultural Activities | Planting, growing, and raising animals | Agriculture, Beekeeping, Poultry Raising, Floriculture |
| AM | Missionary and Community Activities | Witnessing, service to others, and practical Christian living | Christian Storytelling, Youth Witnessing, Family Life |
| EB | Bible Teachings | Doctrine and Bible study (block created inside AM in the 2025 edition) | Holy Scriptures, Creation of the World, Sabbath, Second Coming of Christ |
| AP | Professional Activities | Trades and professions | Bricklaying, Carpentry, Electricity, Accounting |
| AR | Recreational Activities | Camping, sports, and outdoor life | Camping Craft, Knots and Lashings, Drill, Map and Compass, Slackline |
| CS | Science and Health | Human body, science, and first aid | First Aid, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Chemistry, Basic Human Anatomy, Vaccines |
| EN | Nature Study | Living beings, environments, and natural phenomena | Birds, Reptiles, Ecology, Astronomy, Volcanoes, Primates |
| HD | Home Skills | Taking care of the home and cooking well | Culinary Arts, Basic Sewing, Bread Making, Home Care |
| ME | Master Awards | Not a content area: it's the recognition for completing a defined set of honors on the same topic (there are 16 Master Awards, not one per area) | ADRA Master Award, Zoology Master Award, Bible Teachings Master Award |
Each area also has its own background color on the patch. The uniform guidance that circulates in the field arranges the sash exactly that way — patches grouped by cluster and background color, headed by the Master Award patch — but we couldn't find that text on an open SAD page, only reproduced in club materials; check the current regulation for your field. Since the exact color-per-area table also isn't published openly, we cover this topic carefully in areas and patch colors and in the honor sash guide.
One code detail that confuses people: Bible Teachings appears in the Manual's index as its own block (EB), but the code printed on the honor carries the compound prefix AM-EB, because the block was born inside Missionary and Community Activities. If your material shows AM-EB, that's correct.
A naming note: Nature Study, Agricultural Activities, and Science and Health appear in older materials with small name variations ("Nature Studies", "Agricultural and Related Activities", "Health and Science"). It's the same area. The code is what doesn't change.
What changed in the 2025 edition?
The most visible change was the birth of the Bible Teachings (EB) block, with 28 honors, created inside Missionary and Community Activities. It's no coincidence that there are exactly 28: the titles follow, one by one, the 28 Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, from Holy Scriptures and the Trinity to the Millennium and the New Earth. That's why the codes appear as AM-EB-001 through AM-EB-028.
Beyond that, the Manual gained titles with a distinctly 2020s feel. They sit at the end of each area's numbering — a sign that they entered in recent revisions, even though the SAD doesn't publish which edition each one was born in: Amigurumi (HM-089), Digital Art (HM-090), and Lettering (HM-091) in Arts and Crafts; Rubik's Cube (AR-118) and Slackline (AR-119) in Recreational Activities; Basic Human Anatomy (CS-036), Medicinal Plants (CS-039), and Vaccines (CS-042) in Science and Health; Migratory Animals (EN-097), Home Composting (EN-101), Primates (EN-104), and Volcanoes (EN-106) in Nature Study. The codes above were checked against community catalogs, which are the only open listing with numbering; the official titles and requirements are in the printed Manual.
A note about Stewardship: it has existed for a long time as AM-015, in Missionary and Community Activities, and now also appears inside Bible Teachings, as AM-EB-021, since Stewardship is one of the 28 beliefs. We couldn't confirm whether the SAD discontinued the old title or whether both coexist — check the current Manual before recording it.
About the exact net change from the revision, honesty is called for: surveys published by specialized outlets within the movement mention roughly 70 to 77 honors added and around 25 discontinued, but the SAD hasn't released that breakdown in an open statement. Treat those two numbers as a third-party estimate, not official data.
What if a Pathfinder had already earned an honor that was dropped from the Manual? Don't make up a rule: the earned patch is part of their history, but we couldn't find any open-source SAD guidance on how to handle a discontinued honor already earned, in the record or on the sash. Start with the club secretary and your field; if the question is about interpreting a requirement, the official page itself says it should be forwarded to the Division.
Read alsoCamping I, II, III, and IV HonorsWhy do internet lists never match?
If you compare five sites, you'll find five different totals. The causes are always the same four, and it's worth knowing them so you don't get lost:
- Different editions. The previous revision was finished in April 2012 and circulated with a little under 500 honors — community catalogs that reproduce that edition mention 475 honors and 15 Master Awards, a number the SAD never published in an open statement. Whoever copied that text and never updated it keeps publishing the old figure.
- Community catalogs include discontinued honors. Wikis and blogs preserve discontinued titles for historical value, and the sum overshoots the Manual's total.
- Counting by the highest code. The numbering has gaps. If the Nature Study area reaches EN-107, that doesn't mean there are 107 active honors there.
- Mixing up systems. Many English-language tables actually translated the North American list, which has different categories and names from the SAD's.
There's still a detail that causes a lot of confusion: the SAD doesn't publish the total number of honors per area in an open statement. The only per-area number stated by the Division itself is for the creation of ADRA, with 9 honors and 1 Master Award. The Bible Teachings block, with 28, is known because its complete list is public. For the other areas, anyone wanting precision has to count title by title in the current Manual.
That's why our recommendation is simple: when you need one number to cite, use 518 honors and 16 Master Awards, always paired with the edition (2025) and the date it was checked. A number without a date grows stale in silence.
Who decides what goes in and out of the list?
What the rule says. The SAD's official honors page is explicit: all the honors and the minimum requirements for earning them are described in the South American Division Honors Manual, and only the Division has the authority to revise and/or replace requirements. And it goes further: questions about interpreting requirements, or possibilities for substituting items in special situations, must be forwarded to the Division — that's exactly what's written. It's not the association, not the union, and not the club that's responsible for interpreting a requirement. The official text doesn't describe which channel the request goes through, so confirm the process with your field's secretariat before sending it.
How the revision happens. In November 2011, the work was transferred to the SAD, which created the GEED (Pathfinder Honors Study Group). For the first time, leaders from across South America could submit proposals for creating and revising honors online, and the cycle was completed in April 2012. That's the process that gave birth to the ADRA area. The 2025 edition followed the same logic of collective revision.
What varies and who decides. There's a single list for the whole SAD, but the pace of adoption varies: the Spanish translation comes out after the Portuguese version, and each union and association decides when the printed material arrives, when the new codes appear in the systems, and how it guides clubs through the transition. The club doesn't create honors or change requirements — the club teaches, evaluates, and records.
Why this matters. It's this single standard that makes a patch mean the same thing in Manaus, Porto Alegre, and Lima. Without it, every club would invent its own level of difficulty and the sash would turn into a decoration. To better understand the hierarchy of documents that govern the club, see the official manuals guide.
From the list to the sash: how to use this in your club
Having 518 options is great and, at the same time, an invitation to scatter your focus. The approach that works is choosing by area, not by impulse: settling on two or three areas for the year with the counselor, closing out blocks, and, when it makes sense, aiming for a Master Award. That way the sash tells a story instead of turning into a patchwork quilt. The step-by-step is in how to earn an honor.
Two criteria from the Manual help with planning. Basic honors are designed for the 10-to-15 age range, and advanced ones for age 16 and up, with the basic version as a prerequisite (that's why advanced titles carry the suffix "- advanced"). The official list of designations also says an honor should be completed within three months at most, and that long-duration requirements are adjustable (the example given is swapping a 4-day campout for 2 weekends). That designations text has been published since 2013, and we haven't confirmed whether the 2025 edition kept it word for word, so confirm how it applies with your club leadership.
About registration, it needs to be said plainly: the one that officially registers the Pathfinder, the club, and the insurance is the SGC, the Church's own Club Management System. That's irreplaceable, and no third-party tool — including Desbravai — plays that role. What Desbravai does is the day-to-day: organizing who's working on what, tracking the unit's progress, and not letting an honor die halfway through. Official registration always stays with the SGC.
One last practical tip: before locking in the calendar, take a look at the most popular honors. They tend to be popular for a good reason — accessible materials, an instructor who's easy to find, and a requirement that fits into a Saturday afternoon meeting.