As Girl Scouts cookie season kicks off this January, girls across the country will not only be selling iconic treats like Thin Mints and Samoas, but also learning valuable skills in entrepreneurship, leadership, and community service, all while supporting their local troops and earning important badges.
There is a lot more to Girl Scouts than meets the eye. Claire Contreras, High School Counselor at Mt. SAC Early College Academy (MECA), states that when she moved around a lot as a kid, Girl Scouts helped her “find community and friends”. For a lot of girls, finding a good community of friends is really difficult, but the Girl Scouts program helps girls build long-lasting friendships and bonds.
The program also helps girls learn real-life skills that they can apply to their day-to-day lives. Makenna Chung, a freshman at MECA, says that she likes Girl Scouts because she gets to learn “ how to manage [her] business, how to manage money, [and] how to profit.” These are valuable skills that aren’t taught in school.
During cookie season, girls get to practice these skills while selling cookies. For instance, they have to learn how to talk to people in order to make profits.
The Girl Scouts program also provides an opportunity for girls to get their silver and gold awards. These are the highest awards one can get in the program, and many colleges like to see these awards because they show great leadership and dedication.
For a silver award, a Girl Scout needs to identify issues in her community that she is passionate about and then choose what issue she is going to do her Silver award project on. Then, she needs to spend about 50 hours working on this project in her community to earn the award. From there, she gives a final report to her troop and other troops in her community.
The gold award is the most prestigious award in the Girl Scout program and requires the girls to use all the skills they have learned through their years in the program.
If a Girl Scout wants to get a gold award, there are some prerequisites. First of all, they need to be in high school, registered as a Girl Scout Senior or Ambassador, and have completed two Senior or Ambassador Journeys, or have earned the Girl Scout Silver Award and completed one Senior or Ambassador Journey.
If a Girl Scout has all the prerequisites, then she needs to go through some similar quests and issues to those for the Silver Award, but the issue needs to be relevant on a national or even global level. The project also needs to be sustainable, and this means that the project should have a long-lasting impact even after she gets her gold award. There is a lot of effort and work that goes into getting a gold award, but the lessons learned throughout this experience are invaluable.
There are a lot of Girl Scouts on campus at MECA, and students are very excited to support their troops by buying cookies. According to a poll asking MECA students what their favorite Girl Scouts cookies are, Thin Mints and Samoas were 70% of students’ favorite cookies!
A few voted that S’mores and Toast-Yay were their favorites. Sadly, this is the last year that those cookies will sell. They are being discontinued and replaced with new flavors next year.
Girl Scouts would sell their cookies at school, in parks, via email, basically anywhere they could. Contreras shared that her daughter, a brownie, would sell cookies by “reaching out to family and friends in person, and [they would] also send emails, texts, and social media posts.”
To the Girl Scouts, cookie season isn’t only about cookies; it’s also about learning new skills. Sophia Limon, a senior at MECA, stated, “We aren’t just seasonal people who sell you cookies or trail mixes depending on the time of year. We [are] a group of girls who became friends, learned how to do a couple [of] things, and went on adventures.”
Being a Girl Scout is about facing new challenges; one of the challenges that freshman Trinity Camacho faced was language barriers. Camacho shared that one time, “We went in front of [a] church, [and] we have to [sell cookies using] different languages based on the masses that were occurring with time.”
To show if a Girl Scout has mastered a skill or not, the Girl Scout will get a badge from their troop leader every time they master a skill or complete a task. Then, the Girl Scouts would put the newly earned badge on their vest or sash.
Sophie Limon’s most memorable badge that she earned is her Camporee badge; she shared that “[it was] the first camping trip I went on. With all the other troops, I made a sock plushie of a bird, joined the campfire, made butter in a jar, climbed some trees, and played with hula hoops and bubbles.”
The Girl Scouts of the USA organization was founded by Juliette Gordon Low in 1912. The idea of starting a Girl Scout was founded during a meeting in 1911 with Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouts.
Since then, the Girl Scout organization has become increasingly popular. It has expanded outside the United States to China, Mexico, and many other countries. Over the last 63 years, the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) has become the largest girl-serving nonprofit organization in Southern California.
Overall, Girl Scouts aren’t just a group of girls selling cookies during cookie season. They are an organization of girls who learn new skills every day and try to make the world a better place. So support the Girl Scouts and buy cookies from them!
