What do Girl Scouts learn from selling cookies?
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What do Girl Scouts learn from selling cookies?
It’s Girl Scout cookie season and you know what that means: Swaths of girls and parents hawking Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos in supermarket parking lots, door-to-door, and in workplaces and offices across the country.
But what lessons are these girls learning from this venerable cookie selling tradition? Marketplace Money Senior Producer Paddy Hirsch asked that question in this interview.
“I’m told that this Girl Scout cookie experience is supposed to be educational in terms of business and economics,” he said. “But I just don’t see it.”
Turns out, there are lessons to learn. We hear from two Los Angeles Scouts who note that selling cookies “helps us with our social skills… and counting money and things like that.” And “we’re learning to be more polite… and saying ‘thank you.'”
The annual event also teaches skills for getting ahead in life and work, according to one mom we asked: “The girls are more assertive, they’re confident, and those are life skills for everyone – especially women – to be successful.”
Listen to the full interview in the audio player above.
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