5 variety case pack
Girl Scouts of Southern Appalachians launched the 2025 cookie season as troops, parents and service unit managers picked up their initial supply of cookies to sell on Tuesday, January 28.
Public cookie booth sales across East Tennessee run from February 7 to March 16. Visit here to find a booth near you.
What do Girl Scouts do? Here is one of many stories about the forming of our future leaders.
Lending Food Cupboard: A Gold Girl Scout story
Kayla Wright of Morristown established a community cupboard to address food insecurity. She researched local food pantries and created a resource guide for those in need of food and personal hygiene supplies. Through her hard work, Wright expanded and increased accessibility to resources in her community. She earned a prestigious Girl Scout Gold Award in 2024 for her Lending Food Cupboard project.
Gold Award Girl Scouts are rock stars, role models and real-life heroes who address issues they’re passionate about by using everything they’ve learned as a Girl Scout to solve an issue. They plan and implement projects that produce lasting change in the community and beyond. It is the Girl Scouts’ highest honor.
Kayla’s concern over hunger in her community led her to volunteer with food distribution organizations, where she developed the desire to find a way to do more. She partnered with a local Dollar General store and thrift store, Abundant Hope Ministries, to create and stock a community cupboard. Kayla built and installed the pantry and worked with Abundant Hope to ensure it would always have staff to monitor and restock it. She also recruited several college volunteers to help support the pantry.
Over the 100 hours she and her team invested in the project, Kayla gained some awesome skills such as how to use power tools like a drill, circle saw and orbital sander. She also learned that with any large project, it takes a village. Kayla honed communication skills while soliciting volunteers and keeping them informed, and by sharing information about the new community resource through social media, her local newspaper and her school’s website.
Through all of her Girl Scout adventures, her favorite memory is when her troop went to Savannah, Georgia, to visit the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace Museum, to explore and learn more about the founder of the Girl Scouts.
In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her favorite people, including her mom, and her cat, Spoon. She likes ballet, crocheting, playing Dungeons and Dragons, attending Renaissance fairs and listening to audiobooks.
Her plans include pursuing a bachelor’s degree at East Tennessee State University.
Gretchen Crawley is chief communications officer for Girl Scouts of Southern Appalachians.
