Girl Guides of Canada / Instagram

By Emily Keller

girl guides

Local Girl Guides finding new ways to sell cookies during coronavirus outbreak

Mar 31, 2020 | 5:30 AM

The local Girl Guides will now be selling their cookies at Canadian Tire and Save-On Foods, and online through London Drugs in Grande Prairie during the COVID-19 pandemic, as door-to-door sales have been halted due to social distancing mandates.

Cindy O’Flaherty, Commissioner for the Wapiti Meadows District, which is the Girl Guides district that covers Grande Prairie, says they first got the idea to sell at stores from the Girl Guides in Leduc.

“Before we even found out from province that that was happening, Ron (Regnier) from Canadian Tire here contacted us to see if we could partake in that with them, and now we’ve heard that Girl Guides nationally are combining with different stores to try to get our cookies out there.”

O’Flaherty says they have had ro cancel and postpone many activities and trips because of the ongoing COIVD-19 situation globally. They are hoping to be able to still raise funds from selling the cookies, but that they did not take the easy way out by stopping the door-to-door cookie sales.

“We’re allowed to sell to family and friends as long as we’re watching that social distancing, and we’re taking pre-orders, so some of the girls have sheets where they can take orders so that when things settle down, they can deliver to that person.”

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She says they still want to the guides to learn things such as money management, responsibility, and community involvement that come through face to face sales.

Molly Linfield, a Girl Guide with the Grande Prairie Rangers, says the cookies are one of their most important funding sources, and has been around since 1927.

“Our fundraisers are our only way of funding all of the camps and all of the programs and all of the trips that we do, and it really means a lot that these stores have come out to help us with this because with no funding, units couldn’t continue to exist.”

O’Flaherty says that the Girl Guides will not be able to hold the annual fall mint campaign for the cookies at this time.

The cookies cost $5.00 per box, and can be bought at the stores or online through Save-On Foods and London Drugs. Save-On says they expect the boxes to be on the shelves by early next week.