Girl Scouts Aims to Teach Digital Skills with Cookie Program
- Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014
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The Girl Scouts of the USA, famed for their annual fund-raising cookie sales, have unveiled Digital Cookie, a platform that aims to teach girl scouts digital and marketing skills while enabling them to sell cookies online or via an app.
The platform creates a fun, safe space for girls to sell cookies while adding a digital layer to the existing business and people skills the cookie-selling program aims to teach young women. The Digital Cookie platform is designed to introduce girls to online marketing, app usage and eCommerce, placing more than 1m Girl Scouts in control of a fledgling digital business.
The Girl Scout Cookie Program aims to give girls training in basic business acumen, with over two-thirds of female CEOs on the Fortune 500 list having taken part in their youth, and the Digital Cookie program hopes to encourage girls to pursue science and technology careers and help them learn skills grounded in technology.
The Digital Cookie program enables customers to buy Girl Scout Cookies through two different digital sales platforms, depending on their area. Girls will be able to market their online cookie business by inviting customers to a personalised website via email, enabling customers to order from home. Alternatively, girls will be able to take orders in-person using a mobile app that enables them to process credit card payments and arrange for direct shipping.
As with the traditional Girl Scout Cookie Program, 100 per cent of the net revenue earned from sales will remain with the Girl Scout council that sponsors the sale, with the girls of the troop empowered to decide how the money is reinvested in their neighbourhoods through service projects and learning experiences.
“For almost a century, the Girl Scout Cookie Program has been teaching girls to be leaders in the world of business and finance, and we intend to ensure that legacy continues in the digital age,” said Anna Maria Chávez, CEO of Girl Scouts of America. “Digital Cookie is a game-changing for Girl Scouts, and a quantum leap forward in the evolution of the cookie program, coupling traditional sales activities with an online sales experience that teaches skills like online marketing and eCommerce.”