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Girl Scout Cookies Fuel Leadership
In case you haven’t heard, Girl Scouts is the best leadership experience for girls, created specifically with and for girls. Our secret sauce? The Girl Scout Leadership Experience (GSLE), a one-of-a-kind leadership development program that pairs girls with strong female role models and mentors, and opportunities where girls can build skills in a safe, supportive environment. Girls find a safe space in Girl Scouts where they can feel free to be themselves without the pressures and social anxieties that can come from a mixed-gender environment. And our leadership model is designed to meet their interests and needs because it’s collaborative and places importance on a diversity of perspectives.
There are a lot of ways girls experience the GSLE, including the Girl Scout Cookie Program®. It propels girls to skill-building and success. There are thousands of examples of how that is done; we’ve chosen one to share with you—last year’s top Cookie Entrepreneur, Girl Scout Ambassador Maureen K. Joining as a Girl Scout Daisy in kindergarten, she has participated in the Cookie Program for thirteen seasons.
“I was very shy in kindergarten,” Maureen said. “It took a lot of practice and experience for me to start feeling confident in myself, and Girl Scouting definitely did that for me. When we went out to sell cookies door to door, I hid behind my mom at first. I was really slow to warm up to strangers, so it took a lot for me to knock on doors. Selling cookies is exciting, but for me it also brought on challenges that I had to overcome. It takes bravery to put yourself out there and talk up potential customers. But I did it! And that bravery and confidence flowed over to other things in my life.”
Last year, Maureen was able to place 6,600 boxes of cookies in customers’ hands and also sold over one thousand boxes through the Gift of Caring option where Girl Scout Cookies are donated to the USO for military members. This year, her goal is to sell at least 6,000 boxes.
With cookie proceeds, she has fueled her Girl Scout experience which has included camping trips, special adventures in the outdoors doing rock-wall climbing, white-water rafting, paddle boarding, and trips abroad such as a recent one to England. And her “cookie dough” has also helped her plan and carry out Take Action projects to improve her community which resulted in her earning her Girl Scout Bronze Award, the highest award for a Girl Scout Junior, and the Girl Scout Silver Award, the highest award for a Girl Scout Cadette. To earn the Silver award, she planned and implemented a project whereby she created and published a book on the prevention of plastic pollution, in particular in our waterways and oceans. She also conducted several workshops on this subject with younger Girl Scouts. Maureen is currently pursuing the highest award in Girl Scouting, the Gold Award, and continues to serve GSCCC as a Media Girl. This cookie season, Maureen is helping us get the word out to local media and appeared on WTKR’s Coast Live!
Those leadership skills, many learned within the Cookie Program, also led her to accept a position on GSCCC’s Board of Directors in 2022-23, where she dedicated time serving on the Council’s Advocacy Committee. In that role, she attended several events, including traveling to the state capital and visiting with legislators and members of the Governor’s cabinet to share important information about Girl Scouting. Maureen also served as a National Council Delegate for two terms, representing our membership at the Girl Scouts of the USA National Council Session where she presented and voted on proposals vital to our Movement.
The Girl Scout Cookie Program is about so much more than just cookies. (Though who can resist a box of Thin Mints®?!) Research shows that the more involved girls are in the program—managing money, setting goals, working with others, understanding customers—the more impact these five skills will have on them. The skills that girls learn through the real-world, hands-on experience of the Cookie Program will last them a lifetime.
