The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“It’s very much a different focus for these kids”
Giving a Girl Scout a few bucks and getting a box of Thin Mints is a pretty good deal, no matter what happens after we have our favorite flavor in hand. But this year, the local Daisy Scout Troop decided to make the treat even sweeter, with a dash of compassion.
Before the group of a dozen 6- and 7-year-old girls set a sales goal, delivered a cookie or collected a cent, they knew they wanted to do something more than take their share of the proceeds and get a pat on the back.
“The girls learn all kinds of moral lessons,” Scout leader Stephanie Juneau says. “It’s very much a different focus for these kids. It’s not athletic and it’s not academic. Daisy Scouts is more about personal development.”
Staring into one of their green, orange, purple, red or blue boxes and pulling out a slender sleeve of goodness can induce tunnel vision in almost anyone, but selling Girl Scout cookies has always been about more than the cookies. It’s about bringing girls together as a team, building each girl’s confidence and interpersonal skills through the sales process and teaching young women the skills they need to become successful leaders. The money is just a part of it.
As the group met prior to setting out to sell cookies this winter, they read lessons from their Daisy Book about integrity and having respect for oneself and others. Then they called a meeting in the boardroom of a local bank to talk about how they should spend their earnings. They decided to donate.
After selling 1,345 boxes of cookies, the Daisy Scouts had $400 to donate any way they chose, opting to give $100 apiece to Crested Butte’s Old Rock Library for children’s books and the regional Toys for Tots organization, which works to collect Christmas gifts for children in need.
Along with the donations given locally, the Daisy Scouts decided to look abroad for a worthy cause to give the remaining $200 to and they found Nothing But Nets and Heifer International, which both provide foreign families with gifts that bring more than smiles—they provide the promise of health where there might have been suffering.
Nothing But Nets is a Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization endorsed group that raises the money and awareness needed to fight the spread of malaria. The money donated by the Crested Butte Daisy Scouts will be enough to send eight mosquito nets to Africa and potentially save as many as 16 people from the disease.
Juneau said the gift the girls gave to Heifer International was enough to buy a dairy goat for a family in need, allowing the recipients to start a small dairy that could earn money for food, healthcare or education.
Some things are worth more than money, however, and the local Daisy Scouts didn’t let their benevolence fade after the last dollar was given away. They took nine remaining boxes of cookies and divided them between the lucky elementary custodians at Crested Butte Community School, the Oh Be Joyful Food Bank and the men at New Adams House—and gave a gift of happiness.
