MUSCATINE, Iowa–Throughout the year, Muscatine County’s 105 active Girl Scouts keep busy with community service. Though the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has changed some of the opportunities available to them, Muscatine County Service Unit Director Melissa McNally reports they have stayed engaged. Scouts have assisted with Memorial Day services for veterans at local cemeteries, volunteered at the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, donated to the Muscatine Center for Social Action and made holiday care packages for their domestic violence shelter, and even sent Christmas cards to people living in long-term care facilities.
Each year, troops budget for how they will cover the cost of their service projects as well as other activities, such as completing experiences to earn badges and attending summer camp. Annual sales of Girl Scout Cookies make all of these activities possible.
Despite cookie sales looking a little different in 2021 because of the pandemic, regional troops did quite well, selling a combined 750 thousand packages of cookies and donating 2,800 more to Care and Share, a program which sends Girl Scout Cookies to active duty members of the armed forces as well as other other public servants such as medical personnel. “It was a little bit down from last year, but the demand is still there,” observed Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois Vice President of Marketing Maura Warner.
This year, scouts began taking cookie orders the weekend of Jan. 7. To help younger girls prepare for the experience, Muscatine troops hosted a cookie rally at Saints Mary and Mathias Catholic School. At that event, more experienced scouts, particularly those in middle and high school, taught newer scouts some of the basics of running a cookie business, such as how to make change, keep track of their sales, and send thank you notes.
Girl Scouts will have several options for selling their cookies this year. In addition to directly selling to interested community members, scouts will once again offer online cookie sales. An innovation that proved wildly popular in 2021, girl scouts can set up a page on the Girl Scout’s Virtual Cookie website and share their link with people wanting to shop. Purchasers can then order cookies and have the scout drop them off for free or have them shipped directly to their houses for a fee. Anyone wanting to buy cookies online who does not personally know a scout may still do so by visiting the Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois website and using a troop link.
As in previous cookie selling seasons, Girl Scouts will also sell cookies at major shopping centers, such as Hy-Vee and Walmart, as well as at smaller businesses that invite a scout they know to sell there. In person cookie sales will begin Feb. 18 and take place over weekends.
Though each girl and troop set their own goals for cookie sales, Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois have high hopes that they will bring in more money from cookie sales than they did last year to allow girls to have more positive learning experiences and to have more resources to share with the community. So, when you get the urge to munch this winter, Warner invites you to consider getting some Girl Scout Cookies. “All the proceeds from the cookie sales stay local in our region,” she highlighted.
