PERU – The beginning of this year ushers in the next century of Girl Scouts selling cookies. The Girl Scout Cookie Program not only teaches girls essential entrepreneurial skills but also powers amazing experiences for them across the United States.

The Girls Scouts of Central Illinois are kicking off the 2018 Cookie Season with the annual Cookie Rally, to be held Jan. 27 at the Illinois Valley YMCA in Peru. More than 200 local Girl Scouts will gather to build their cookie business plans, learn selling skills from leaders and each other, and team build around the 2018 sale.

This year’s theme is built around the cookie entrepreneur, with a focus on educating young girls on essential business skills, confidence and leadership in their journey to earn their MCBA (Masters of Cookie Business Awesomeness). This year, the crunchy graham cookies with creamy chocolate and marshmallow filling and natural flavors is back.

Girl Scouts is building future leaders, one box at a time.

During the cookie selling season the girls “earn and learn.” GSCI focuses on five key skills, setting them up for an entrepreneurial future including goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics.

During Girl Scout Cookie season, each G.I.R.L. (Go-getter, Innovator, Risk-taker, Leader) sets out to sell delicious cookies while also building entrepreneurial and business skills imperative for leadership and future success. Almost 1 million Girl Scouts participate in the cookie program each year, generating nearly $800 million in sales during the average season. All of the net revenue raised—100 percent of it—stays within the north central Illinois area. Councils use cookie earnings to power amazing experiences for girls through their programming, while girls and their troops decide how to invest in impactful community projects, personal enrichment opportunities, and more. Further, skills girls learn in the cookie program also influence later success: data shows more than half (57 percent) of Girl Scout alumnae in business say the cookie program was beneficial to skills they possess today, such as money management, goal-setting, and public speaking.

This year, girls will sell cookies door-to-door and at booth sales as well as through the Digital Cookie platform, an innovative and educational web-based addition to the cookie program that helps girls run and manage their Girl Scout Cookie businesses online. Now in its fourth year, the Digital Cookie platform continues to bring Girl Scout programming into the future by providing girls with invaluable business and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills that prepare them for 21st century leadership.

To volunteer, reconnect, donate, or join, visit www.girlscout.org.