Visa and Dell are investing big in the Girl Scouts this year.
The all-female youth organization entered the digital world last year with a new online platform for its annual cookie drive. The New York Times reports that Visa (V) and Dell, current and former Fortune 500 companies, plan to invest about $3 million to help update it.
The Girls Scouts’ Digital Cookie website and mobile app will now include games, videos, quizzes, music, and math and technology workshops. The workshops are intended to encourage young girls to one day enter the technology sector, while the other additional features teach them entrepreneurial skills, such as budgeting and decision making. Ellen Richey, Visa’s vice chairwoman of risk and public policy, told the Times that “it’s the perfect marriage between technology and a premier leadership program that teaches digital, social, and money skills to girls.”
Though this will be the first partnership between Visa and the Girl Scouts, Dell has a history with the organization. It first began collaborating with the group in 2012 and has since dedicated over $2.5 million, including donating hundreds of tablets to help underprivileged scouts participate in the cookie drive and developing the Digital Cookie mobile app. “Girl Scouts is creating the next set of entrepreneurs,” Trisa Thompson, Dell’s vice president for corporate responsibility, told the Times. “If you can catch girls young enough, you can spark the fire.”
