Cookies Send Scouts to Hawaii

The members of a local Girl Scout troop used proceeds from their Girl Scout cookie sales to fund a trip to Hawaii, where they celebrated each girl’s earning the Silver Award and learned about Hawaii and its history.

After saving the troop’s share of proceeds from three years of Girl Scout cookie sales, Ashton Broman, Jennifer Kang, Lisa Karbon, Jane Lee and Sara Wolff spent eight days on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, accompanied by troop leader Lynne Karbon and troop committee members Kim Broman and Adele Wolff.

The girls held three meetings during the summer to prepare for their trip. At the first meeting, they studied the history and culture of Hawaii and the history of Girl Scouting in Hawaii. In their second meeting, they discussed packing, budgeting, sight-seeing, and activity options. The final meeting was a potluck featuring Hawaiian food, and an overnight during which they watched the movies “Hawaii” and “Pearl Harbor.”

The trip was planned around the girls’ “bridging” from their current level as Cadette Girl Scouts to the fifth and final level of Girl Scouting, Seniors. Thanks in part to efforts of the troop’s cookie chairman, Dave Kelley, the girls received special approval to hold their bridging ceremony aboard the decommissioned USS Missouri, America’s last battleship.

For the past three years, the troop has arranged for donations of more than 2,600 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to be shipped to American troops serving in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, which gave the ceremony on the Missouri special meaning.

The girls designed their own bridging ceremony, which began in early morning on Aug. 23, on the Arizona Memorial. The ceremony commenced with the girls acknowledging the touching memorial to the lives lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. They threw leis overboard to honor those individuals buried forever under the memorial.

The girls later received a behind-the-scenes tour of the USS Missouri from the misouri’s education manager.

“I was overwhelmed and in awe,” Jennifer Kang later wrote. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience with the special tour.”

The girls then gathered on the deck for their bridging ceremony. They said their names and the Girl Scout promise in Hawaiian, and promised to meet the challenges of Senior Girl Scouting.

The members of troop 988 are now working to earn the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouting.