Dubai: Sharjah Girl Guides (SGG) raised Dh23,000 for orphans by selling cookies as part of its annual ‘Cookie for A Cause’ campaign last week.
Guides aged 12 to 15 years sold over 1,100 packs of cookies provided by Zo’s Kitchen at Dh20 each at American University of Sharjah, University of Sharjah, and the Higher Colleges of Technology Sharjah Women’s College.
Following in the global Girl Scouts and Girl Guides cookie-selling tradition — launched nearly a century ago to raise funds for guiding activities — SGG organised the guiding tradition to raise funds for charity, allowing the girls to not only help other children, but also learn valuable leadership skills and gain experience in different charity programmes.
Shaikha Abdul Aziz Al Shamsi, Assistant Manager at Sharjah Girl Guides, said: “The girls made the most of the opportunity to contribute to an extremely worthwhile cause and at the same time learn some positive lessons which will help them to develop into responsible and socially conscientious citizens. The campaign has proved to be highly effective from both a practical and humanitarian viewpoint, perfectly aligned with UAE’s 2017 Year of Giving.”
Through donating to the Sharjah Social Empowerment Foundation, which helps with the development and care of orphans and provides them with financial and moral support, the girls also acquired some basic goal setting, decision making, money management and business ethics skills.
Al Shamsi added: “Our primary goals are to ensure that SGG plays a role in contributing to the local and national community and also to introduce new experiences which will help the girls later in life. With the Cookie for A Cause campaign, we have combined these two elements with equal measure and equal success.”
