HELENA — Pallets of Samoas, Thin Mints, Tagalongs and more were delivered to Mesa Moving and Storage Monday morning in Helena.
Helena-area Service Unit manager/Girl Scout Leader Tolly Patten was overseeing the delivery and says through the next several days they’ll get all the cookies out to troop leaders. From there they will then get sorted and given to individual scouts for distribution. Individual box sales at Girl Scout stands will begin this weekend.
“By the end of our cookie season, Helena typically sells around 60,000 boxes of cookies,” noted Patten.
There are more than 200 Girl Scouts in the greater Helena area. Patten says cookie sales are important for Girl Scout troops for several reasons.
“Cookie sales allow us as leaders to teach the girls financial literacy,” Patten explained. “We talk about goal setting, decision making, team building, money management, business ethics and at the end of all this we’re able to do big things as a troop.”
The Girl Scouts themselves set their own money-earning goals for the season. The net proceeds from Girl Scout Cookie sales stay local with the originating council and troop to fund community service projects and special trips.
Helena scouts have been able to travel to Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York and more thanks to cookie sales, trips some of them would have been able to do were it not for Girl Scouts.
“It’s been ecstatic to see their expression, knowing that their parents hadn’t paid for this trip and that they had earned and worked for it all by themselves,” said Patten.
Patten says financial skills are life lessons and was honored when one of her former scouts told her those skills were incredibly helpful when planning her wedding.
“She used those budgeting skills and goal settings and all those decision-making skills that we had taught through Girl Scouts to budget and plan her wedding. I’ve also seen that with a lot of my girls that graduated, getting through college with very little debt or no debt.”
Girl Scouts of Montana and Wyoming are expecting to sell around 1 million boxes by the end of their cookie season. New this year are Adventurefuls, brownie-inspired cookies topped with caramel flavored creme with a bit of sea salt.
More information about joining the Girl Scouts or signing up as a troop leader can be found on the Montana and Wyoming Girl Scout website.
