\u201cIt fluctuates by roughly 50 cents, where it’s like the more you sell, you get a little higher,\u201d said Nahmias. Olive\u2019s troop makes $1.10 per box but that number varies across troops. The remaining per-box cost goes towards paying for the larger organization\u2019s bakery, staff, and facilities.<\/p>\n
Technically, all the Scouts make as remuneration are their badges and prizes\u2014from plushies to camps, to trips to Europe\u2014and their troops make little more than a dollar per box, depending on each local Girl Scout Council\u2019s guidelines. What they do with that money is decided upon by a collective decision-making process that involves the Scouts and their councils, but it usually includes community service projects, travel, and other programming.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always been very aware of political issues,\u201d Olive said. \u201cWhen you think about Girl Scouts not getting enough money per box, it is a political issue.\u201d Which is why, towards the end of the film, Olive makes a bid for fair compensation for Girl Scouts, along with having a larger say in the organization\u2019s programming.<\/p>\n
Troops receiving more money per box sold through the Scouts\u2019 labor will let them \u201cgo on trips,\u201d Olive explains by way of example. \u201cWe might be able to pay for badges and people’s membership because membership prices just got raised.\u201d She wrote to the Girl Scout CEO, Tayuanee Dewberry, following which, the film tells us, Olive is invited to be a member of a non-voting advisory board.<\/p>\n
Her involvement with \u201cthe board hasn’t been as successful as I had hoped,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I will certainly keep trying to get my demands. I am still writing letters, talking to people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among Olive\u2019s more immediate ambitions is to be a delegate at the National Girl Scout Convention. Delegates have the power to vote on matters like pricing and programming. \u201cIt’s real Girl Scouts doing things, not just the adults in power, which I think is awesome,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Nahmias, who made her filmmaking debut in 2011, Olive\u2019s struggles are all too familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I’m pitching my films, there is always that idea that cuteness sells. And I was interested in how early we start to get those ideas,\u201d she says, admitting that before the film, her relationship to the Girls Scouts was minimal. \u201cI really saw myself in the girls in a bigger way; it was never really about [scouting]. It was about girlhood and capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nahmias\u2019s mother, she said, was a Girl Scout.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and ended up being the first person, not just the first woman in her big immigrant family, to go to college,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember her talking about Girl Scouts as one of the things she was able to do as a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girl Scouting gave Nahmias\u2019s mother a sense of agency. Similarly, the organization is an early training ground for developing leadership and business skills that millions of young girls, much like Olive and the film\u2019s other protagonists, can hone through selling cookies.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a program that exposes scouts to hurdles women face in the workplace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt fluctuates by roughly 50 cents, where it’s like the more you sell, you get a little higher,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[76665,17,9,24,63,122,124,123,19769],"class_list":["post-318725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-bon_appetit","tag-culture","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-textabovecenterfullbleed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}