Girl Scout
More than 32,000 cookie jars sold: Eight-year-old collects donations for children with cancer
© Sheila Fitzgerald / Shutterstock
She fought cancer and is not intimidated by a pandemic either: Lilly Bumpus broke the girl scouts’ cookie sales record, even though sales at the doorstep are not possible.
She is only eight years old, has already beaten cancer and now holds the record for most Boy Scout biscuits sold in the United States: What sounds like a Hollywood movie also happened in California. Lilly Bumpus broke the record for the most cookie jars sold at the Girl Scouts’ traditional fundraiser.
Won against cancer
Lilly was born eight years ago with Ewing’s sarcoma – bone cancer. She managed to beat cancer as a baby and has been cancer-free for seven years. Nevertheless, she suffers from the effects of the treatments and still needs frequent medical examinations.
With her mother, Lilly decided to start an organization that helps families and children with cancer, both mentally and financially. The “Team Lilly Foundation” helps small cancer patients and their relatives through the difficult times – and in some sad cases also “on the way to heaven”, as the organization writes on its Facebook channel.
Donations for cancer patients and the homeless
Boy Scout groups in the United States raise funds each year by selling cookies. The children traditionally go from door to door and try to bring as many cookies as possible to the man or woman for a good cause. For the current sales season of the Girl Scouts, Lilly Bumpus had the dream: to sell as many cookies as possible and collect as many donations as possible despite the pandemic. Her recipe for success: She wrote an open letter at the beginning of the “biscuit season”. In it, she explained that buying biscuits meant supporting her in her big dream.
The eight-year-old went live on her Facebook account almost every day and answered questions about her campaign. Her mother stated that she was particularly proud that, despite the many supporters that Lilly had for years, Lilly’s own voice was heard for the first time. And thanks to Lilly’s commitment, her biscuits were not only ordered in the US, but from all over the world. Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Egypt, France, Italy and many other places around the world received biscuit shipments from the eight year old. Many ordered two or four boxes straight to their home, as Lilly’s mother Trisha Bauer told “Mercury News”. It was also possible for buyers to donate the biscuits directly to soldiers or homeless people.
Record broken
At the beginning of March, Lilly learned that she had already sold 15,000 cookie boxes. A few thousand more – and it would break the previous record of 26,086 cans sold. Within a few days, Lilly managed school, biscuit shipping, social media and sales on her own doorstep and sold 10,000 more biscuit boxes.
On March 21st, the time had come: at a small celebration prepared by friends and family, they unveiled the sales figures for the biscuit boxes: Lilly had sold 32,484 boxes full of biscuits! At the beginning of the season – just under three months earlier – Trisha Bauer had warned her daughter how stressful it would be to sell biscuits this year because of the pandemic. But little Lilly was not intimidated by this and replied: “Nothing is impossible when everyone decides to make it possible”.
Donations for the needy – and koalas for Lilly
“It feels like the world believes in me – and that feels really good,” says Lilly about her success. Lilly now personally delivers 1000 biscuit boxes each to children’s hospitals in the area. 1000 are going overseas to US soldiers and another 1000 boxes are going to the homeless.
The eight-year-old gives most of the donated money to cancer research and an organization that helps the homeless. She would like to fulfill a big dream with a small part: She would like to travel to Australia and cuddle with koalas.
Source: “The Mercury News”
This article originally appeared on stern.de.