By Alexandra Savage
Many former Girl Scouts can remember the excitement of going door-to-door selling cookies to their neighbors. Personally, every winter I looked forward to when I could trudge through the snow and pass out boxes of thin mints. Although my Girl Scout career was short-lived, I still look back on cookie season with fondness.
Though the pandemic prevented many girl scouts from reaching customers, this year the cookie mania has returned. This is good news for the Girl Scouts who, according to NPR, raise $800 million in cookie sales per year. Fortunately, cookie fans have plenty of opportunities to buy their favorite flavors this winter.
However, there is a lot more to being a Girl Scout than selling cookies. Today, I sat down with former Girl Scout Emily Lamb, a sophomore at GW, to ask her about the Girl Scout experience.
Q: How long were you involved with the Girl Scouts?
A: “I was a girl scout for all thirteen years, so I was a daisy, and then a brownie, and then a junior, and then a cadet, and then a senior…And then I also am a bronze, silver, and gold award girl scout, which means I’m basically the girl scout equivalent of an eagle scout.”
Q: And what did you have to do to reach that level?
A: “Ok so the prerequisite for the bronze award is called the ‘journey,’ and you do a larger group project with your whole troop. My troop ran a weekend STEM camp for girls. The Bronze award is the larger group award. For the Silver award, you can participate with a small group or you can do it individually, so I worked with one other girl in my troop and we did a STEM summer camp and we ran, like, three different activities for that which was very cool. And then for the Gold award, you have to do it individually, and it’s an eighty-hour service project with lots and lots of requirements. For my project, I focused on voter engagement, so I established student advisory positions for a bunch of local organizations. And then I did a project where I distributed voter education voter registration packets to every student as they turned 18 for two straight years, which was a lot of work.”
Q: Why do you think the Girl Scouts are a positive organization that young girls should join?
A: “I think that Girl Scouts is great because it’s a very well-rounded organization. If you want to camp and tie knots, you can camp and tire knots. But you also get to learn about public speaking and about managing businesses and about STEM and all these different things. You really get this cool, well-rounded extracurricular experience plus the true sisterhood that comes from Girl Scouts. There are girls that I was not friends with outside of Girl Scouts who are genuinely people that I’m very close to because we spent this time together in Girl Scouts. Plus, not only do you have your direct troop but you have the entire Girl Scout community in your town and your region.”
Q: So I’m assuming you sold cookies as a Girl Scout, can you tell us a little bit about the Girl Scout cookies and that program?
A: “Absolutely, so I will be perfectly honest that I faded out from Girl Scout cookie selling as I got older, just because I had other priorities within Girl Scouts, but I remember going around to all my neighbors, and we had our little packets and everything and I had to practice with my mom before I went out, and I had my whole pitch. But the whole process is setting up a business plan, setting a goal, figuring out how you’re gonna reach that goal and executing a plan. We always had a goal of where we were going to put the proceeds, so my troop donated to St. Huberts, which was an animal shelter near us, and we would always donate all of our money there.”
Q: Why do you think it’s important for young girls to have the community that Girl Scouts provides?
A: “I think that Girl Scouts is a different environment than school. There’s a lot less pressure. And I think that being involved with girl-only spaces when you’re growing up is extremely important because when you’re in school there’s a lot of pressure from different sides. When you’re in a girl-only space, you just lose some of the pressure. And I don’t buy the whole idea that ‘girls are catty’, that’s just nonsense. Girl-only spaces can be some of the most supportive spaces you can be in.”
Q: And of course, what’s your favorite Girl Scout cookie?
A: “I’m definitely a thin mint girl…I also have some very core memories about Tag-a-longs from elementary school, but thin mints for sure.”
Clearly, there’s a lot more to being a Girl Scout than selling cookies. Girl Scouts teaches business skills, public speaking and teamwork. The next time you buy a box of Girl Scout cookies, consider the long and fascinating history of the organization.
