CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The “largest entrepreneurial program for girls in the nation” kicked off Friday.
The Girls Scouts of Black Diamond Council started this year’s cookie sale period with its Cookie Palooza event at the Charleston Town Center mall. The event marked the start of when girls can begin taking orders for cookies.
“This is the biggest program we do every year,” council CEO Beth Casey said. “It makes the most impact on our girls, and it teaches them skills that they will carry with them through their life.”
The Girl Scouts of Black Diamond Council includes troops in 66 counties in West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland. According to Casey, the 5,500 scouts in the council sell more than one million boxes of cookies each year.
“It’s a big funder for the program we are able to provide at the council level as well as for our troops. our troops use that money to go on special trips and to do a lot of their local community service projects,” she said.
Casey, who has a daughter in the program, said people get excited about getting the cookies each year, but there are lessons for the scouts as well.
“You need to figure out what’s your end goal and how many boxes do you want to sell. Decision-making is an important skill. As a group, they decide how they are going to use that money,” she said. “Then there is money management; we have a girl who sells over 3,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, so she is responsible for over $12,000. And then there are people skills. The soft skills are what employers are looking for nowadays.”
Girl Scouts will begin selling cookies outside of retailers on Feb. 22. Scouts will deliver cookie orders in March.