Cookies to Careers

With 50 million alumni and 110 councils, the Girl Scouts are a name in little towns and big cities nationwide.

Most people identify the Girl Scouts with their infamous cookie program, which attempts to teach girls entrepreneurship traits that the organization feels make better leaders.

The girls learn as early as preschool how to expand their minds and gain life skills before graduating high school and becoming lifetime members. After years of reflection, some girls say the Girl Scouts didn't help them prepare for their careers, and some moms echo that the experience was just a recreational activity, until it stopped feeling fun.

The Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts is the 10th largest council in the country, with nearly 30,000 girls who go to camps with money earned from cookie sales, participate in activities such as learning how to build rockets and find joy in community service.

Caitríona Taylor, chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts said that while the cookie program is the largest entrepreneurship program for girls in the world, the organization strives in a number of ways to make women full of courage, confidence and character.

"There's goal setting, decision making, money management, business skills or people skills [and] business ethics," she said of the cookie program. "They are getting to run a small business, they are getting to sell cookies, and they get a portion of those sales to then fuel their next adventure."

After the 2019 cookie season ended in March, the organization went to work redesigning the boxes to better reflect what the money from sales goes toward.

Taylor said the girls get a say in that decision, voting for camps or traveling to new cities.

The girls who gain these opportunities may be skewed though, as more than 70% of members are white and top cookie sales were in wealthier cities including Quincy and Marblehead.

Each girl has their favorite part of the yearly curriculum, whether it's summer camps in Swansea, learning archery in the fall or seeing celestial objects during a sleepover at the Museum of Science in Boston.

Older girls reflect on how easy it was to have these experiences and get badges for them. With newer guidelines, called journeys, it can take more than 10 steps for a girl to gain a badge. But current Girl Scouts say they find their gratification in personal growth instead.

For troop leaders like Heidi Sutherland, an 18-year veteran mom of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, the new cookie box designs reflect the things she likes to see most in her troops.

"You know, watching them learn things, watching them come out of their shells. We've had a wide variety," Sutherland said. "It's really a remarkable thing to watch the transformation ... going from these shy, silly girls, to these not so shy, silly girls."

Jackie Elder, a troop mom for several years, said she was disappointed when things started to feel more like a business.

"We lost our local chapter," she said. "They merged with this bigger group and it made it really difficult ... it struck me at that point that it was more of a business. They were very concerned with the products we could sell, the money we could bring in."

With some time to reflect, many Girl Scouts look back on their time fondly and would encourage the experience for others. Some girls look back and remember the difficulty of being around other girls who weren't exactly friendly.

Kelsey VanFleet said she will always appreciate that the Girl Scouts made her try new things. She quit when the program no longer aligned with her newer interests in painting and theater.

"It can be good but I also think sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be. I think the best part is if you’re in a troop with girls you really love," she said. "I don’t think the skills are anything that are necessary. I don’t think you need to be in the Girl Scouts or you’ll be behind in any way."