By Ashley Perham
For HDMedia
Can you smell that? Mint, caramel, peanut butter, lemon, chocolate and marshmallow are filling the air in West Virginia as Girl Scouts begin their annual cookie sale.
This year, there’s a new cookie called the Exploremore that tastes like rocky road ice cream.
Friday, more than 50,000 boxes of cookies were delivered to the Girl Scouts of Black Diamond Council in Charleston for Boone, Lincoln, Logan, Roane and Kanawha counties.
The Black Diamond Council oversees troops in 61 counties in West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland and Virginia.
Beth Casey, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Black Diamond Council, said the cookie program started in the 1930s with girl scouts baking cookies in their homes and selling them to raise money for community projects.
Today, it’s the largest entrepreneurial program for girls in the nation, Casey said.
“The money all stays local,” she said. “The troops get some, the Girl Scout Council gets some, and it’s all to support our girls.”
Casey said the most popular cookies locally are the Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs.
Girl business
Local troop volunteers came Friday with pickup and U-Haul trucks to pick up the cases of cookies. Casey said all the treats would be sold with some set aside to stock a cookie cupboard where troops can get more cookies.
The record for highest sales in the Black Diamond Council is just over 3,000 boxes. Casey said every year around 60 girls sell over 1,000 boxes.
“Girls are getting real creative with selling their cookies now,” she said. “They can still do door-to-door. They do the cookie booth. They all are able to set up a digital site where you can order online, and then they use their social media accounts to help publicize their digital sites.”
Scout skills
Candice Slate, troop leader for Troop 32280 in Sissonville, picked up 8,500 boxes of cookies Friday. The troop’s goal is 11,000. She said her girls love cookie season because they can showcase their skills.
“They learn business skills. They learn talking to people, they learn how to manage money. Even my youngest kindergarten and first-grade Daisy Scouts like to use the Square [payment card] reader,” she said. “Then, all the way up to my middle school and high school girls, they are able to talk to … adults that they don’t know, talking about their projects, talking about the activities that we’re going to do, and it really builds their confidence.”
Slate said the older scouts can then learn to budget the funds that they raise by choosing activities to do, from community service to fun outings.
“One of the big things for me has been seeing the girls who don’t have the opportunities to travel and to do things get to go and experience things,” Slate said.
She described a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo where the girls spent the night in the manatee enclosure. For many of them, it was their first trip away without a parent.
“We went to Sky Zone last month, and that was something that may seem frivolous to a lot of people, but that was something that a lot of the girls had never gotten the opportunity to do that a lot of us take for granted,” she said.
Project funding
Slate’s daughter Hattie, a sixth grader at Sissonville Middle School, said in a statement that she’s learned how to handle money, talk to people and run her own business.
“Our troop has had a lot of experiences, including a trip to SkyZone, an overnight at the Cincinnati Zoo, camping, trips to the Legislature, and seeing plays at the Clay Center and Alban Theatre,” she said. “We also do community service – cooking for Ronald McDonald house, birthday kits for the Sissonville food pantry, and fun kits for hospitalized kids”
Hattie said the project she is most proud of is putting feminine hygiene products in her school bathroom and providing take-home kits for girls if needed.
“We continue to stock the bathrooms this year and make sure all girls have access to the products they need,” she said.
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