Cooking for a Cause
From left to right: Seniors and Cooking for a Cause organizers Nina Cloven, Mimi Ryan, Savannah Norman, and Kristin Robinson. Photo by Molly Englander.
January 22, 2016
Students madly rush to the hallway between the stairs and Dr. Peace’s room. Why? Cooking for a Cause is holding their quarterly bake sale. The students jostle for a spot in the crowded line, and a smiling Nina Cloven ’16 proudly plops a scoop of Blue Bell ice cream onto the first students’ plates. Savannah Norman ’16 accepts crinkled one dollar bills, and some five dollar bills from students less picky about their diet. Kristin Robinson ’16 and Mimi Ryan ’16 busily arrange the bills, while Molly Englander ’16 takes pictures of moist mounds of brownies, and smiling students.
Maddie Jiongo ’14, Mollie Salona ‘14, and Isabella Chieffalo ‘14 created Cooking for a Cause. They created it as a fundraising club, in which they organized bake sales. They used the money from those bake sales to donate to various causes and organizations. When they graduated, they passed the torch down to current seniors Ryan, Englander, Norman, Cloven, and Robinson. When the current organizers graduate, they will pass the torch to three or four sophomore girls to carry on the legacy.
Cooking for a Cause holds a bake sale each quarter. Traditionally, they raise anywhere between $300 and $500. For the second quarter bake sale, which was held on December 14, Cooking for a Cause raised $327, which they gave to victims of the San Bernardino attack.
“We chose [San Bernardino] because we felt it was a really pertinent issue that affects all of us,” Norman said.
They have also donated to other charity organizations, including Breanna Brietske’s ‘16 Art for a Cause, sponsored by the Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth. Art for a Cause is an organization in which students all over the metroplex pay to submit their own art pieces for adjudication. The money from that goes into paying for the upkeep of the Ronald McDonald House.
The organizers haven’t decided exactly when the third quarter bake sale is going to be, but the student body will surely look forward to it.
“I believe Cooking for a Cause is a great organization, because not only am I doing something fun, I am doing something meaningful. It’s a win-win,” Cloven said.
