Life rolls on, even in a pandemic. And as they do every year, Girl Scouts across the country are preparing for an unprecedented cookie season.
Monica Haskell, Service Unit Manager for troops in Chaffee County, says that one of the biggest challenges facing local scouts is coordinating how the girls will meet.
“We’re very lucky and blessed that we live in a small community because coordinating and communicating with each other and with the public health is so much easier,” she says. “We started out the year doing meetings at the Scout Hut, using the outdoor space and just being creative around how to get the girls together, but it has been closed through the month of November and December due to the public health order so we haven’t been able to meet.”
Image courtesy of the Girl Scouts of America
Even virtual options are difficult for lots of girls. “At first…we did lots of games and we had a good time, but then school went back in August of this year, and sometimes they were sent home for online learning or the kids stayed home and were doing online learning,” Haskell explains. “They got really fatigued with Zoom and they would rather not meet if we couldn’t meet in person.”
While meeting in person isn’t an option at the moment, the scouts are finding ways to make cookie season work, which means no in-person visits to office buildings or door-to-door sales and a new touch-free payment system that allows them to just scan cards rather than exchange money.
“The Girl Scouts of Colorado has recommended all girls to follow the public health order by the state, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to be going door-to-door and having contact with lots of people over time,” Haskell says. “In years past they would have girls at Safeway and King Soopers [City market] and Walmart. What we’re trying to do this year is drive throughs at those locations, so instead of the girls being at the front door … you don’t get out of your car. They put the cookies in the car, you pay for them.”
The troops were also able to facilitate nut and magazine sales online earlier this year. Girls were able to deliver the nuts to those who ordered online, which Haskell says worked well. “Then we changed the cookie sales this year, too, so the app will now let folks order online, click the button for delivery, and then we can go drop off the boxes, which I think is going to be huge.”
Haskell is hoping this year won’t see any major drop-off in sales. “With the nut sales, we saw an increase. We didn’t do any door-to-door sales, we didn’t go to any businesses. It was just friends and family that were supporting our girls and they sold a lot more than they have in the past. So, I would hope that’s going to happen with cookies, but we only have so many friends and family that we can reach out to for cookie sales. A lot of the troops bought fewer cookies this year anticipating fewer cookies being purchased. But if they’re selling really fast and if the demand is there we can get more cookies.”
In spite of all the challenges local troops have faced, Haskell says they’ve also had new opportunities to join in with troops elsewhere in the state.
“We have more access to things because they’re available online,” she explains. “For instance, a couple of our girls joined a book club that they were able to join because it’s on Zoom. Had we not had the pandemic and had everything go to Zoom, we wouldn’t have been able to do that because it would have been in-person and in Denver.”
“The girls are getting friends from all over the state,” she continues. “You look at COVID as a bad thing, but there really are some positives that are coming out of it. The thing that has been negative has been the inability to do camps. So, those kinds of things have impacted us, but I think it’s helped us as a rural community having access to more things for the girls to be involved in.”
Haskell also says there have been some concerns about not being able to meet in person, but being able to go forward with cookie sales.
“There are folks that are concerned about that. I don’t know if they’re bringing it up to the powers that be and how that will look to the community,” she continues. “We have a pandemic, and then there are girls out selling cookies, so I think that there’s some fear around that. I don’t know how real it is or how valid that fear is, but there’s the question there.”
Going forward, however, Haskell is optimistic about positive change regarding the pandemic.
“My glass is half-full,” she says. “I’m hoping that a lot of people get vaccinated and we are going to be able to get the girls together because they’re in the school system. We’re hoping that teachers get vaccinated and we’ll see a positive outcome to where we can get girls together and when it gets nicer out to be able to start meeting outside again.”
“I would hope more girls would get involved after COVID,” she continues. “I know that enrollment this year was actually really good … We thought we were going to see a decline because of COVID because there’s no guarantee we can meet. I think that our biggest problem is that people don’t really know about Girl Scouts down here, so they don’t know how to get connected…. I don’t know that COVID is really gonna make it better or worse, to be quite honest. It’s either you’re interested in that kind of stuff as a kid or you’re not.”
Cookie sales will end on March 7.
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