Entrepreneurship: Girl Scouts Teach More Than How to Sell Cookies
The Girl Scouts of America turn 100 this year, and to celebrate they are rolling out not only a new lemon-flavored cookie, but new badges. Thirteen of these new badges reward learning about financial topics such as saving and investing, philanthropy, budgeting, and earning good credit. The Girl Scouts’ three million members will be getting a leg up on becoming financially savvy, something not always taught in school.
The Girl Scouts will not only learn valuable life lessons about money, but will put these lessons to use in tangible ways. Before earning the “Financing My Dreams” badge, the girls must first meet with a real estate broker to see if their dream job will pay enough for their dream house. The real estate brokers become mentors, teaching the Girl Scouts the importance of credit in the home loan process, interest rates, and why you should put 20% down on a home. After the Scouts master these skills, they take their dream home and compare it to actual homes listed on the market in their communities and, with the brokers’ assistance, decide how to achieve their dreams. Once this is accomplished the Girl Scout receives her badge as a reminder of the road she must take to get her dream job and home.
As Claire Mysko, author of “You’re Amazing! A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self,” said, teaching financial literacy to young girls is the key to building the confidence they will need to have financial freedom and healthy relationships. But don’t worry boys, the Boy Scouts also offer financial literacy badges including “Personal Management,” which teaches comparison shopping and stock market research.
All children should receive a financial education, regardless of whether they are Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. Schools should be mandated to provide financial education courses so that future generations grow up knowledgeable about money, able to make informed decisions, and able to be financially independent. In 2010, the Treasury Department issued Financial Education Core Competencies to establish a consistent baseline for financial education. It is up to each state to decide how to implement these core competencies, including whether existing classes meet them and if students will be tested and/or minimum requirements imposed for graduation. Currently only 13 states require high school students to take a personal finance course before graduation and only 9 require testing. A study conducted by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) in 2009 looked at students from 15 colleges in states with differing financial education policies. The students from states that required a financial education course had the highest reported financial knowledge and were more likely to display positive financial actions, including being more likely to save, more likely to pay off credit cards in full each month, and less likely to max out credit cards and be compulsive buyers.
All states should require financial education courses in school beginning in grammar school. In the meantime, Scouts are taking matters into their own hands. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts will be learning critical financial lessons that are not available in many American schools and that will help them grow into fiscally confident adults. And of course, by selling delicious cookies, Girl Scouts will be earning that “Entrepreneurship” badge as well.
Watch a video about the Girl Scouts new financial literacy badges on CNN’s website.
This blog post was coauthored by Alison Terkel.
