Irish Girl Guides gear up to sell 30,000 packets of cookies

Entrepreneurs are getting younger, and the Irish Girl Guides are making sure their members are ahead of the pack when it comes developing a business.

As part of the Girls Guides national cookie month, members of the youth organisation from the age of five will be honing their entrepreneurial skills as they sell a total of 30,000 packets of chocolate chip cookies.

By deciding how many packets to order, how to go about selling the biscuits and how they spend the proceeds of their sales, the girls will develop money management and business skills, Guides chief commissioner Helen Concannon hopes.

"We want to change the imbalance of the number of women in decision-making positions across the various sectors of society such as business, communities, companies and board rooms all around Ireland and beyond. And this begins by giving girls confidence," she said.

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Founder of East Coast Bakehouse and investor on RTÉ television series Dragons' Den, Alison Cowzer is partnering the organisation for the initiative and the cookies are being made in the factory she founded.

“It could take centuries to achieve equality without serious efforts to bring women into male-dominated spheres such as business and politics,” she said, noting this initiative will help foster “a spirit of entrepreneurship among Irish girls and young women”.