Notice that I am writing this from the perspective of Italian Boy Scouting, as practiced by AGESCI and CN-GEI.
What always bugged me about the Girl Scout Cookies thing is that the Girls Scouts do not make the cookies. They get them pre-made and pre-boxed. Their effort is limited to selling them.
Now, call me an old crusty Baden Powell fundamentalist, but I suspect that this is not exactly what was meant by "rowing your own canoe", and all that old-fashioned insistence on self-reliance, responsibility etc. etc..
When the Italian scouts (of both sexes) want to raise money, they make things and sell them, or do things and get paid for their labor.
Why can't the Girl Scouts make their own cookies ? I imagine that in the USA there would be all sorts of liability issues ... I suspect that at a certain point in time they probably did make them.
But now ... I mean, why not just enroll the whole GSA in a combined Tupperware/Amway operation ?
Hey ! I wrote an opinionated and higly subjective writeup !