You know, I have heard complaining my entire life about parents issues with Girl Scouts. Every year at cookie time, I hear more crap than I care to about why people aren’t going to buy cookies this year and all their reasons for boycotting this corrupt organization including today’s ridiculous headline via YouTube from someone who isn’t old enough in my opinion to be posting stuff like that because she is not old enough to fully understand the power of her actions – just the fact that media has made it a headline is all the more reason to ignore her bigoted point of view that she obviously was taught by her parents. Well, both of my children have been Girl Scouts, both have sold cookies and this is my second year being the Cookie Leader. Here is my take on all of it.
When I was a kid, my mom paid dues every meeting for me to go do arts and crafts that I really truly wasn’t much into. I worked my butt off selling cookies, and somehow we never did any field trips or anything so that my Mother, myself or my sister could really figure out why we sold the cookies, so right before I became a Junior, my sister and I no longer were in the troop. This is where I explain to everyone, all these years later, that each troop is vastly different. The troop leaders AKA Mom’s are the ones who decide when and how often there are meetings and how much the dues are and how often they are paid. They also decide on all of the activities the troop will participate in. So, you cannot ever base how good the Girl Scouts organization is solely on how one troop behaves.
Flash forward many years – I had my first child who was school age and really wanted to be a Girl Scout. I got her into a really great troop that met twice a month for about 2 hours in the evening. They did a lot of really fun stuff that my daughter loved. She not only had the regular meetings twice a month, but sometimes they did field trips to places like the water park, the pumpkin patch, and other fun places. The dues were only $7.00 per month and those dues were used for not only the craft supplies, but for their field trips. They sold a TON of cookies and that also helped pay for all of the field trips and stuff. Unfortunately, that only lasted a year for her, and she ended up in a new troop with only 3 other girls. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. There were far fewer meetings, however, all dues and cookie money went to a Six Flags trip as well as a week at Girl Scout Camp, 100% paid with money earned selling cookies. She had an amazing experience at camp, met new friends, and still many years later talks about how wonderful the experience was. Unfortunately, she was only with that troop for 1 year, and they disbanded and she ended up falling out of the loop and we could never find another local troop for her to join, but at least she had a couple years of great experiences.
Flash forward a few more years, and about two years ago my younger daughter who is now 10 years old joined a local troop that a couple of her friends were in and whose mother is a friend of mine. She has loved being a Girl Scout! She not only knows a couple girls in the troop, but now has even more friends who don’t attend the same school. They do field trips regularly and earn a lot of patches to show off all of the learning experiences they have had. She has done everything from learning to cook to seeing the Nutcracker Ballet, visited the local veterinarian and the local dentist. Every meeting she learns something new and enjoys hanging out with her new friends. Dues are inexpensive and used to pay for badges and meeting supplies. This troop has not been super aggressive with cookie sales, but they have been awarded for their sales. Last years cookie money went to a day of horseback riding for them. This year they plan to get more aggressive with sales because their goal is to go to camp this summer.
This is my second year as the Cookie Leader, and I find myself extremely frustrated every time I hear people boycotting cookies because they think there is no value in it for the kids. Yes, only 60 cents per box goes to the troop, but a large chunk of that goes to their district who uses it to give them recognition awards for doing the cookie sales. And think about it, that 60 cents per box really adds up when you sell case after case of cookies. My daughter sold 185 boxes last year – that is $111 for the troop – now add 8 more girls selling that many or more onto that total. It is not a small amount and they can do some pretty fun stuff with that much money.
On another note, why is everyone so worried about the money aspect of this? Who are you to decide what is most important to those kids. The intent in cookie sales for the kids is not money – it is learning to set goals, learning to count money, learning how to interact with people, learning that there are rewards for hard work. So, really isn’t it the people who are so worried about how much the troops get from those funds that are the greedy ones? Why do they care how much money the girls get? Isn’t the whole point of Girl Scouts to teach girls friendship, values, etc? Let them enjoy what they are doing, they are only young once, and I have seen first-hand what a wonderful experience it is for my children – they have gotten to do things that I couldn’t afford to have them do, they have learned a lot from their experiences, and they have a lifetime of memories being created.