Girl Scout troop from homeless shelter sells 26,000 boxes of cookies
A Girl Scout troop in Iowa just shattered their goal for cookie sales – but Troop 64224 is unlike any other. The girls in this troop live in a homeless shelter in Council Bluffs.
The number of Girl Scouts in the troop varies depending on how many live at MICAH House. "We are always full, everybody's circumstance is different," Kayla Terrillion, the child program specialist at MICAH House told CBS affiliate KMTV.
"So sometimes yeah, it is the change of the economy that brought this family in, but this other family is coming because of domestic violence," she said.
Usually, Troop 64224, which began in 2018, has six to eight members. One thing is for sure – the scouts are excited. "I have a couple girls that will stop me in the hallway and say, 'When is the next Girl Scouts?' And we have to talk about how many more sleeps they have until they have Girl Scouts," said Terrillion, who leads the troop.
Like all Girl Scouts, this troop sells cookies each year. This year, they wanted to match their previous sales record of 1,000 boxes. "We completely and utterly surpassed it," Terrillion said.
The girls sold more than 26,000 boxes – which Terrillion said she couldn't wrap her head around. Most of their sales were from online orders.
"Not unusual for a Girl Scout troop to have an event for people to come pick up their cookies. But in this case, these cookies only count for a small percentage, because they exploded online," Terrillion said.
As the girls surpassed their original goal, they decided to create a new one: to sell boxes in all 50 states. Terrillion said they posted about the new goal on social media, where more and more people shared their story and bought boxes.
The girls started with a blank map of the United States, and each time they sold cookies in a state, they'd color it in. Now, the map is completely filled. So, they reached not one, but two steep goals.
"People see that we are a homeless shelter, but we are trying to give as much normalcy as possible to our girls and to our families who are staying with us," Terrillion said.