Girl Scout Cookie On-Site booth sales continue throughout March and April

The Girl Scout Cookie Program is known as the premiere entrepreneurial leadership program for girls, with customers eagerly anticipating placing their orders or purchasing cookies from girls at the on-site cookie booths.  Yet many of the Girl Scout troops from Chicago and northwest Indiana are focusing much of their efforts on their end goal: deciding how they will “do good” with the money they raise through cookie profits.

On-site cookie “booth” sales will be available March through April at locations throughout Arlington Heights, including Walgreens on Saturday, March 1 and Friday, March 7. Customers are encouraged to visit www.girlscoutcookies.org or download the free Cookie Locator™ mobile application to locate an on-site cookie “booth” nearest to them. To download the app, customers can call **GSCOOKIES (**4722665437) from their mobile phones.

This year, Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana teamed up with the USO to launch Gift of Caring: Troop to Troop, an initiative to support men and women in the U.S. military by sending them a sweet “taste of home” - Girl Scout Cookies®. Girl Scout troops throughout Chicago and Northwest Indiana are encouraging individuals and businesses to purchase and then donate boxes of Girl Scout Cookies® to the men and women serving in the military. Customers can purchase cookies for the U.S. military troops at $4 per box. The cookies will be distributed directly to the soldiers.

Through the Girl Scout Cookie Program, girls ages 5-17 learn the basics of goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics, all which will carry them into adulthood. They immediately learn the value of collaboration through team-based decision-making, as they decide to use their cookie profits to “do good” in their local communities or take action to make a global impact by partnering with organizations across the world.

“The experiences gained from participating in the Girl Scout Cookie Program are unmatched.  Girls learn to communicate with customers and each other, and work together toward a common goal. They essentially learn all the basics of running their own business,” explains Jeanne Reynolds, interim CEO, Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

For the second year, girls who elect to incorporate new technology into their plans will have the capability to accept credit cards via their smartphones during the booth sales. Credit card readers are attached to their phones, and girls learn to facilitate transactions and calculate the percentage of the sale to be applied to transaction fees.

Customers have eight varieties of cookies from which to choose: The Savannah Smile, Thank U Berry Munch, Samoas, Thin Mints, Trefoils, Tagalongs, Do-si-does, and Dulce de Leche.

Background

It started in 1917 as a simple way for a group of Girl Scouts in Oklahoma to finance their local activities. More than 90 years later, hundreds of thousands of girls ages 5-17 engage in what has become one of the nation’s premier financial literacy and entrepreneurship programs.

For generations of girls, the Girl Scout Cookie® Program has fostered a sense of personal and collective empowerment. It gives girls of all ages the opportunity to practice basic skills they will use throughout their lives, including money management and goal-setting. Participation ultimately furthers the Girl Scout Mission which is to build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.

Profits from the sale of each $4 box of cookies help the council recruit and train new volunteers; update experienced volunteers; offer council-wide program events and outdoor experiences; maintain council properties; pay for printed materials and postage; provide support for 69,500 girls; and offer financial assistance to girls from economically disadvantages areas. All profits are used locally.

About Girl Scouts

Founded in 1912, Girl Scouts of the USA is the preeminent leadership development organization for girls with 3.2 million girl and adult members worldwide. Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana impacts the lives of more than 69,500 girls and nearly 25,000 adult members in 245 communities in six Illinois counties (Cook, DuPage, Grundy, Kankakee, Lake, and Will) and four Indiana counties (Jasper, Lake, Newton, and Porter). For more information, visit www.girlscoutsgcnwi.org.

Customers are encouraged to visit www.girlscoutcookies.org to find cookies available in their areas.