COMMUNITY COMMENT: National Girl Scout Cookie Day is Coming!

By MARZANNE DELAPP DE ANAYA
February 7, 2013

Girl Scouts is one of the most influential programs that any young girl can participate in. Based around the principles of respect, responsibility, leadership, courage, strength, and many other important skills and values, this program is made up of millions of girls of all ages and cultures around the world.  I’ve personally been a Girl Scout for ten years, and it’s helped me learn about myself, community, and the world I live in.

Girl Scouts everywhere are known for kind service, and of course, cookies!  Through cookie sales each year, girls incorporate goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics into their sales. By participating in door-to-door and booth sales, girls build character and confidence by setting goals and determining how to reach them through selling cookies. For example, my troop planned our money earning activities around a trip to Japan we took this past summer.  We met with Girl Scouts in Japan, visited many shrines and monuments like the Hiroshima Peace Museum, and expanded our cultural awareness while traveling all over the country. 

Girl Scouts from Troop 6633 on their trip to Japan.

We also use the sale of Girl Scout cookies to learn decision making and people skills in order to decide who to target as potential buyers, and even the impact cookie sales will have on others.  My troop donates “Gift of Caring” boxes through the USO, and each year we personally take cases of these delicious cookies to be shipped overseas to American soldiers or to be given to returning soldiers at Dulles Airport.  We use these as our way of saying “thank you” for what they do for our country.

From a young age, girls perform service such as this, and also develop plans of delivery and payment methods. They pick up skills in handling and being safe with money.  But cookie sales can be tough sometimes.  Girls bundle up in scarves, mittens, and warm clothes to endure the windy and wintry weather of mid-January.  They also have to pull all of their confidence in order to go up and knock on a stranger’s door to ask them if they’d like to buy cookies.  Girl Scouts, young and old, learn to overcome their fears and present themselves with confidence.

If I hadn’t been a Girl Scout my whole life, I don’t know where I’d be.  I thank Girl Scouts for many of my successes, skills, and motivation to help others.  It has helped me learn how to connect with others, inspired me to do my best to always be honest and fair, and has expanded my knowledge on many topics.  I’ve met tons of successful women such as CEOs, lawyers, and other women who found their roots in Girl Scouting, and I’m proud to say I aspire to be one of those successful women someday.

Marzanne DeLapp de Anaya is a member of Girl Scout Troop 6633, which includes girls from Falls Church City and greater Falls Church.