Brookside bake sale benefits children with food insecurity. Here’s how you can help

Scrolling through social media seven years ago, I noted a post from a West Coast friend about a bake sale her friend was hosting to benefit No Kid Hungry. It mentioned bake sale items, but it felt irrelevant — it wasn’t my city and I didn’t know the organization. After seeing multiple iterations of the post, I clicked the link, landing on No Kid Hungry, the national nonprofit Share Our Strength’s fundraising campaign to end U.S. child hunger.

As a mother and former culinary professional with a need to feed, the facts and figures of child hunger were sobering.

Did you know that 1 in 6 kids is food insecure in this country? Child hunger exists in every state and community, in Kansas City and surrounding rural areas. Most of us know someone who faced food insecurity, lacking consistent access to healthy food.

Remember getting ready for school or a test as a youngster and being admonished to “eat a healthy breakfast so you can do your best”? Without regular access to nutritious food, children have increased school absence, are unable to perform as well on tests, and are less likely to graduate from high school, attend college or pursue advanced degrees. Hunger impacts behavior and the ability to focus, concentrate and learn — and ultimately contributes to perpetuating poverty’s vicious cycle.

It’s not always the poor whose children are food insecure. Because food insecurity is about consistent access, think about middle-income families experiencing unexpected job loss or a devastating illness.

The pandemic’s negative economic impact has forced thousands to juggle jobs. Households lost income when parents stayed home to care for stricken family members. During quarantine, children were unable to attend daycare or school, losing access to school breakfast and lunches, stretching family food budgets even tighter.

The reality is that hunger is all around us.

No Kid Hungry is the only national campaign committed to ending child hunger in our country. Its Center for Best Practices helps school, state and local nonprofits feed more children and works with elected officials, government agencies and advocates to ensure kids get the food they need.

Among policies that No Kid Hungry helped to deliver during the pandemic are a 15% increase for children in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, about $25 per month for working families; a “Pandemic EBT” program providing emergency food benefits of about $7 per child for each day school buildings were closed; and waivers to government rules that normally restrict how schools can feed kids.

No Kid Hungry’s focus over the next year, as it helps kids, families and communities recover from the pandemic’s devastation, is strengthening SNAP to help parents feed their children; modernizing the national summer meals program, especially for children in rural and hard-to-reach communities; and increasing the reach of nutrition programs so communities can help more kids more effectively.

Funds raised through community and national fundraising campaigns support No Kid Hungry’s ability to provide grants to schools and community groups so they can afford what they need to feed kids. Equipment such as refrigerators and coolers are mandatory. If a school serves breakfast in the classroom, carts and cooler bags are necessary to deliver meals. During the pandemic, tens of thousands of school meals programs required all kinds of equipment, from delivery trucks to protective gear for workers to special meal packaging.

In the last year, No Kid Hungry has provided grants locally to the Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas, Hickman Mills School District, Grandview School District, Center School District and Children’s Mercy Hospital Early Childhood Learning Program.

Share Our Strength is built on the premise that everyone has a strength to share. As the owner of a catering business and a passionate baker, I visualized organizing a team of volunteers for a community bake sale to benefit No Kid Hungry. Understanding that every dollar can help food insecure kids connect to 10 school meals is an easy way to embrace the notion that every cookie sold would make a difference.

Our numbers have continued to grow over seven years. After eight bake sales and four culinary experience events, community partnerships with retailers and a local distributor and in-kind donations, the Kansas City No Kid Hungry chapter was recognized as the country’s No. 1 independent bake sale fundraising team for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020 and with luck, 2021. So far, we’ve raised $334,024, which provides 3.34 million meals for kids.

The next community bake sale is 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in Brookside. An enthusiastic team of culinary professionals, chefs, food writers, community bakers and next generation bakers will donate mouthwatering cookies, bars, cupcakes, cakes, pies, tarts, muffins, scones, quick and artisan breads, creatively packaged charcuterie boxes, s’mores kits, pantry items and more.

At the heart of the bake sale is a magical team of volunteers sharing their strengths, united by a common bond: helping children realize the dream of growing up to make a good life, without worrying about having enough to eat tomorrow.

Don’t we all want that?