Girl Scouts of Virginia Skyline announced today the movement-wide celebration of the 100th season of Girl Scouts selling cookies. A century ago, girls started participating in what would evolve into the largest entrepreneurial training program for girls in the world: the Girl Scout Cookie Program®, through which girls learn the essential skills they need to become effective leaders, manage finances, and gain self-sufficiency and confidence in handling money.
To commemorate this banner year for the organization, the highly-anticipated Girl Scout S’mores™ cookies are now available, joining classics like Thin Mints, Carmel deLites/Samoas and Trefoils/Shortbreads.
The sale of cookies by Girl Scouts had humble beginnings, born as a way for troops to finance activities. The first known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts occurred in 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, baked cookies and sold them in its high school cafeteria as a service project. As the Girl Scout Cookie Program developed and evolved, it not only became a vehicle for teaching five essential skills—goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics—it also enabled collaboration and integration, as early as the 1950s, among girls and troops of diverse backgrounds, as they worked together toward common goals.
“It’s a great time to celebrate girls who are becoming strong leaders through the Girl Scout Cookie Program,” said HelenRuth Burch, president of Girl Scouts of Virginia Skyline Council. “With our 100 anniversary of Girl Scouts selling cookies and learning the basic skills and acumen they need to be leaders in business, your cookie purchase not only gives you a delicious treat but also powers amazing experiences for girls!
Girl Scout Cookies not only help Girl Scouts earn money for fun, educational activities and community projects, but also play a huge role in transforming girls into G.I.R.L.s (Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, Leaders)™ as they learn essential life skills that will stay with them forever. Starting from its momentous, first known sale, Girl Scout cookies have gone on to become an indelible part of American pop culture and history—and have enjoyed support from some equally iconic figures and notables. Babe Ruth promoted the Million Cookie Drive during the 1924 World Series. Former First Lady Lou Henry Hoover inspired the first organized national sale of Girl Scout Cookies in 1933, and girls used cookie earnings during this time to help communities cope with the debilitating effects of the Great Depression by collecting clothing and food for those in need. And when the popularity of Girl Scout Cookies soared higher than expected in 1936, commercial cookie bakers were called in to assist in making the sweet treats. Last year, the 88th Academy Awards had the audience eating out of Girl Scouts’ hands, with film stars clamoring to buy and munch on cookies during the telecast.
Not even cataclysmic world events have dimmed the popularity of Girl Scout Cookies or the resolve of tenacious and resourceful girls. During World War II, there was a global shortage of cooking ingredients like eggs, milk, and sugar—and Girl Scouts, too, were faced with imposed war rationing. Girl Scouts sold calendars with images of them engaged in wartime service activities instead of cookies, using some of the proceeds to support the war effort through humanitarian actions like running farm-aid projects, planting victory gardens, and sponsoring defense institutes that taught women survival skills and techniques for comforting children during air raids. When postwar prosperity flourished across the country, Girl Scouts employed clever new sales tactics to their advantage. By going door-to-door and setting up booths in shopping malls, the girls were able to reach customers in innovative ways, as well as sell a brand new cookie—the now iconic Thin Mints®, which first were produced in 1939 as “Cooky-Mints.”
