 |
| Girl Scout Cookies |
The annual cookie program kicks off today when local Scouts start making their door-to-door sales requests. Girls in kindergarten through 12th grade will be taking orders through Feb. 5, and the boxes will arrive for pickup (and for group sales) in the Quincy area during the week of March 5.
"It has become so well known over the years. It is our biggest fundraiser," Erica Douglas, public relations specialist for the Girl Scouts of Central Illinois, said. "Our girls use it to raise funds for their own individual activities, and it's important for the organization, too."
Adams County has about 800 Girl Scouts, and the service center in Quincy services about 1,800 Girl Scouts. The Quincy service center is one of seven in the Central Illinois district, which serves about 20,000 Girl Scouts in 38 counties.
This year's sale offers eight cookie varieties -- Thin Mints, Caramel DeLites, Shortbreads, Lemonades, Peanut Butter Patties, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Shout Outs and Thanks-A-Lots. The Shortbread box will come in a special box this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts, which will officially occur on March 12.
Each box of cookies is sold for $4, and $3 of that sale stays locally to support the Girl Scouts.
"We have (sales) training in December with our local adult volunteers, then those people meet with the girls," Douglas said. "Each of the girls is encouraged to make a goal. A kindergartner might want to sell enough to make a trip to the St. Louis Zoo, and a high school girl might want to try to go Europe.
"As a whole, they gain a lot of life-learning skills, from finance to marketing to public speaking."
If you're not contacted by a local Girl Scout, Douglas suggests calling her office at 222-1030.
Last year, girls sold 207 million boxes of cookies nationwide. Douglas said about 78,000 boxes were sold in Adams County last year.
The national Girl Scouts office recently announced that Savannah Smiles, bite-sized lemon-wedge cookies dusted in powdered sugar, would be sold this year to help celebrate the 100th anniversary. The cookie acknowledges the Georgia city where founder Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout troop in March 1912.
Those cookies were introduced by Little Brownie Bakers, but the Central Illinois office instead uses ABC Bakery for its cookies, so the Savannah Smiles won't be available locally.
Operation Cookie Share is against part of this year's sale. It allows customers to not only support the Girl Scouts but also show their support for the military. More than 145,000 boxes have been delivered to military troops in the past two years.
"When you order your cookies, you just tell your Girl Scout how many boxes you want to send to (the troops)," Douglas said.
No comments:
Post a Comment