Area Girl Scouts distribute cookies

On Saturday about 3.25 million boxes of Girl Scout Cookies were distributed to Girl Scout troops throughout the greater Los Angeles area, with local events held in La Cañada and Glendale.

“The cookie program is so much more than a fundraiser,” said Carol Fairshter, the service unit cookie chair who was managing the distribution event. “It’s really about girls learning business skills because they’re really running a cookie business. We focus on the five skills for them, which are goal-setting, decision-making, people skills, business ethics and money management, and all of those have special elements that the troops are training and teaching the girls about those different pieces, and what they look like.”

Adult volunteers from the troops and the local community came out to run the distribution event, which operated in a drive-through method for the second year in a row: Troop leaders pulled up to the event in vans and, after checking in at the first stop, proceeded through to each of the stations, divided by cookie type.

The La Cañada event, held at the parking lot of Flintridge Prep school under the 210 Freeway overpass, distributed about 70,000 boxes to more than 80 Girl Scout troop leaders from Crescenta Valley and Glendale areas. The Glendale event, held at Andy’s Transfer and Storage, was for distribution of 100,000 boxes to about 100 Girl Scout troop leaders from Altadena, Pasadena and Sierra Madre.

Although the distribution event in La Cañada was handled mainly by adult volunteers, a few older Girl Scouts from local troops were on hand to help as well, including Lauren Fairshter, a senior at Crescenta Valley High School.

Fairshter said one of the big skills she was picking up while volunteering was leadership.

“Just being one of the only Girl Scout station leads here, it doesn’t necessarily matter how old the volunteers are, it’s just about getting [the cookies] picked up,” she said.

The boxes picked up Saturday were for pre-order customers, as well as for the first round of sales in front of local stores, which are being held from Feb. 25 through March 23.

Booth locations are available at www.girlscoutcookies.org.

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Follow Sameea Kamal on Twitter: @SameeaKamal.

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