The wait is almost over!  Our Girl Scout Cookie Activity kicks off on January 13 and runs through February 5. Everything girls do in Girl Scouting is designed to help them grow into leaders with Courage, Confidence, and Character, and the Girl Scout Cookie Activity is an important ingredient in this leadership experience.

Every year, thousands of girls gain valuable knowledge while providing the community with a special treat.  The Girl Scout Cookie Activity is an integral part of Girl Scouting’s Business and Economic Literacy initiative for all girls ages 5 to 17. Girls develop essential skills such as goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics.

The Girl Scout Cookie Program – the largest all-girl business in the world – teaches five essential skills that shape girls’ futures. They are skills that will help girls grow into leaders in their own lives, leaders in business, and leaders making the world a better place for all of us.

Goal Setting: Your Girl Scout sets cookie sales goals individually and with her team, creates a plan to reach them, and develops cooperation and team building skills along the way.

Decision Making: Your Girl Scout helps decide how her team will spend their cookie money, furthering critical thinking and problem solving skills that will help her in many aspects of life.

Money Management: Your Girl Scout takes cookie orders, handles customers’ money and gains valuable and practical life skills around financial literacy.

People Skills: Your Girl Scout learns how to talk to, listen to, and work with all kinds of people while selling cookies. These experiences help her develop healthy relationship and conflict resolution skills she can use throughout her life.

Business Ethics: Your Girl Scout is honest and responsible at every step of the cookie sale. Her business ethics here reinforce the positive values she is developing as a Girl Scout.

The proceeds from the Girl Scout sale stay local. This revenue is used to benefit girls, some of it directly by remaining in the Girl Scout troop/group treasury and some of it indirectly by subsidizing the cost of providing the Girl Scout program locally.

Earnings from Girl Scout cookies help Girl Scouts of Central Illinois:

• Recruit and train volunteer adults to work with girls.
• Provide the financial assistance needed to make Girl Scouting available to all girls.
• Improve and maintain camp, service centers, and other activity sites.
• Keep event/camp fees for all members to a minimum.
• Sponsor special events and projects.

Erica Douglas
Public Relations/Advertising Specialist