Cake4Kids bakes extra special birthday cakes for Connecticut kids in need

WTNH News 8
By Alyssa Taglia
Wednesday, January 20, 2021 06:47 am Eastern | Updated: January 20, 11:30 am Eastern

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — Think back to your birthday as a kid. You’re surrounded by family, friends, presents, and of course, birthday cake.

Now, imagine not being able to blow out your candles and make that special birthday wish. Unfortunately, that’s the reality for many children.

That’s why one Wethersfield woman has made it her mission to make sure kids in need get an extra special birthday cake.

Jaclyn Dougan helped bring Cake4Kids to Connecticut. The national organization, which was founded in California back in 2010, bakes and delivers birthday treats to underserved children on their special day.

“It just shows them that someone is thinking about them,” Dougan said. “They get to request whatever kind of cake they want.”

The cakes are even delivered to group homes, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters.

In November 2020, Cake4Kids made its way to Connecticut, rolling out in Hartford. Dougan now heads the local chapter.

“It’s definitely very rewarding. Just a reminder that sometimes it’s the simple things in life that we kind of take for granted.”

She and her fellow volunteers bake in their own kitchens and personalize each cake with a whole lot of love.

“We just want to make sure that child is getting a cake that’s individual to them on their special day. My wish for them is that we can expand throughout Connecticut and serve all of those kids.”

More information about volunteering or donating can be found online.

If the video above doesn’t work, you can watch the segment here.

Cake4Kids Comes to CT: Giving Birthday Cakes to Foster Children and At-Risk Youth

NBC Connecticut
By Angela Fortuna
Thursday, January 14, 2021 | Updated January 14

What started as a gesture to provide birthday cakes to some foster children and at-risk youth has turned into something the creator could never have imagined.

It all started in Sunnyvale, California when Libby Gruender read an article about a young girl in foster care who received her first-ever birthday cake. After hearing about this, Libby made it her goal to make sure the children in her community had cakes to celebrate their birthdays.

What Libby started in 2010 as an effort with very few volunteers baking 13 cakes for a few agencies turned into a huge operation that now has hundreds of volunteers.

Cake4Kids is now baking over 3,000 cakes a year for over 140 agencies.

Kids can even submit their own requests on what they want their birthday cake to look like.

The people who bake these cakes never get to meet the kids because of privacy concerns. Rather, they deliver cakes to caseworkers.

"Me baking something that they personally want for their birthday cake is just such a rewarding experience," Cake4Kids social media coordinator and volunteer baker Malissa Tibbling said.

Connecticut's Cake4Kids branch started about a year ago when a local family decided to expand from California's chapter and move here.

It started when the parents of this family were stressed out about their kid's upcoming birthday. They couldn't afford a cake, so they started looking for local resources to help, but couldn't find any in Connecticut.

That is when they found Cake4Kids in California and saw they were looking to expand, so she reached out to them and started the process to open up a chapter here in Connecticut.

So far, 32 cakes have been made to date with a lot more requests lined up.

"A lot of the times, the kids and parents are blown away by how the cake looks. Some of our volunteer bakers do an incredible job, just as a hobby, the cakes come out looking like they are professionally done," CT Cake4Kids Ambassador Jaclyn Dougan said.

Libby passed away in 2013 and Cake4Kids says they're not only keeping her mission going but every year, they recruit new volunteers, partner with more agencies and provide more and more children with birthday cakes for their special day.

In the times of COVID-19, the operation has had to adjust. With volunteers getting sick, others volunteered to pick up cake requests and the whole thing has been a huge team effort. There have even been contactless deliveries to keep everyone safe.

Volunteers say the effort is certainly a rewarding experience.

"It's definitely a rewarding experience, it's great to let those kids know that someone is thinking about them on their special day," Dougan said.

Cake4Kids is always looking for volunteers. To find out how you can help, visit their website.

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Link to article

Volunteers launch Connecticut Cake4Kids branch to bake personalized birthday cakes for kids in foster care, group homes, shelters

Cake4Kids is a national nonprofit organization whose volunteers bake decorated, personalized birthday cakes for kids in foster care, group homes, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and other unstable living situations. (Courtesy Cake4Kids)

Hartford Courant
By Susan Dunne
Monday, January 11, 2021 7:57 am

When Jaclyn Dougan, a family advocate with Middlesex Health in Middletown, met with one of her regular families last year, the kids were excited that a birthday was coming up. But the mom was stressed, because she couldn’t afford a birthday cake.

“In a program I work in, we can’t bake or give anything like that. So I started to look at other resources available for this, which is something a lot of our families face,” Dougan said.

Dougan discovered Cake4Kids, a California-based nonprofit whose volunteers bake and decorate birthday cakes for kids in foster care, group homes, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and other refuges from unstable living situations.

Dougan is now the ambassador in the newly opened Connecticut chapter of Cake4Kids. In addition to running the chapter, she coordinates a team of 34 volunteer bakers, including herself.

“Baking is a hobby of mine. It’s great to bake with a cause,” said Dougan, who lives in Wethersfield.

Since opening on Nov. 12, Dougan’s branch has donated 35 cakes to children, whom they find through their case workers.

For now, the Connecticut chapter serves just Hartford County. Dougan said she hopes to expand to other counties, if she gets enough volunteers and organizational partners. “New Haven County is next on our list,” she said. The coronavirus pandemic has slowed the expansion, she said, but it is still moving forward.

Cake4Kids is a national nonprofit organization whose volunteers bake decorated, personalized birthday cakes for kids in foster care, group homes, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and other unstable living situations. Each cake has the child's name and is decorated with the child's hobbies and interests. (Courtesy Cake4Kids)

Alison Bakewell, director of operations for the Cake4Kids national office, said for kids with tumultuous lives, a birthday cake is more than just a birthday cake.

“It really builds self-esteem and makes the youth feel special, knowing that a complete stranger went out of their way to make something especially for them, something that they requested,” Bakewell said. “We hear over and over again from youth, especially teens, that it is their first birthday cake ever.”

NAFI CT, a human services agency, is a founding partner in the Cake4Kids Connecticut branch. NAFI CT Director of Operations Amy Lefebvre said kids with stressful childhoods don’t take birthdays for granted.

“Every kid should celebrate birthdays. They’re important. But sometimes they don’t feel they are important,” Lefebvre said. “The difference a cake on their birthday makes is amazing, especially when the cake is all about that kid. We always ensure the kid’s name is on the cake.”

When NAFI arranges cakes for youths, each recipient gives their favorite flavors and hobbies. “We find out if she is into unicorns or LEGO or SpongeBob or ‘Blue’s Clues,’ if she likes chocolate,” Lefebvre said. “When the cakes come, the kids are just thrilled.”

Due to privacy concerns, bakers never meet the kids. They deliver cakes to case workers. Bakewell — who, despite her perfect name, does not bake for Cake4Kids — said the cakes help case workers, too.

“So many of these youth didn’t have the best start in life, get moved from home to home and don’t trust adults. This can make it difficult for the case worker to build trust,” she said. “When a case worker asks what kind of cake they want and then delivers it … it can create a bond and build trust.”

Bakewell said since the nonprofit was founded 10 years ago, 23,744 cakes have been delivered in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, Washington and Washington D.C. New branches are expected to open this year in Massachusetts, Idaho, Kansas and Georgia, she said.

Cakes must be decorated to the child’s request. Dougan said formal decorating skills are welcome but not mandatory.

“You don’t have to be a professional baker by any means. There are a lot of different ways you can decorate. You may not have the technical skills to do piping, but you can use edible paper or toys to cover the cake, or candy melts. It’s actually amazing how many ways there are to make amazing-looking cakes,” she said.

To donate or to discuss partnering with the Connecticut chapter, email jaclyn@cake4kids.org. To volunteer as a baker, visit cake4kids.org/volunteer.

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.

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Link to article

NAFI CT Teams Up With Cake4Kids to Spark Some Smiles

NAFI CT
Monday, December 21, 2020

The young women in NAFI Connecticut’s residential programs at the Touchstone Campus in Litchfield are writing a recipe for finding new sweetness in life by brightening the lives of other youth facing challenges.

As part of NAFI CT’s partnership with the new Connecticut chapter of the national nonprofit Cake4Kids, the young women at Touchstone hope to transition from being recipients of Cake4Kids sweet deliveries to joining the corps of volunteer bakers who make cakes, cupcakes, and more for youth in foster care, group homes and other settings.

Touchstone, where services address the unique needs of adolescent females involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, is home to the Touchstone Program and the DBT Group Home (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) program.

“We had a student council meeting and introduced Cake4Kids to the girls,” explained Freddy Mendez, the Program Director for Touchstone, which currently has eight young women.

They requested Thanksgiving-themed cupcakes from the Cake4Kids Connecticut chapter, which officially launched in mid-November.

“The kids loved the cupcakes,” Freddy said, describing the long-term goal of turning the equation around to have the young women become Cake4Kids bakers as part a baking group activity at Touchstone.

“They’re really excited about that,” Freddy said, adding of the partnership between NAFI and Cake4Kids, “It was really sweet that they did this. This is awesome.”

Cake4Kids was founded in 2010 to provide free birthday cakes to foster children and at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area. What began as a grassroots efforts with a few volunteers has grown tremendously and now includes chapters in seven states and Washington, D.C., including eight chapters in California.

The Cake4Kids recipe is simple, the results are delicious, and the pay-it-forward positive energy that comes from youth who face challenges knowing someone cares enough to bake a personalized cake for them is priceless.

Launched by the late Libby Gruender after she read story about a girl in foster care in the Midwest receiving her first birthday cake, Cake4Kids partners with agencies that support at-risk or underserved youth in settings that also include homeless shelters, transitional and low income housing, domestic violence or human trafficking shelters, and substance abuse programs.

Each chapter of Cake4Kids has a community ambassador who does all the local groundwork, finds partners, recruits volunteer bakers, and oversees orientation efforts before the baking begins.

“All of our bakers are volunteer at-home bakers and they range in skill levels, so it can go from a nice looking homemade cake all the way up to ‘I can’t believe that’s a cake,’” explained Alison Bakewell, Director of Operations for Cake4Kids.

“Many of these ladies and gentlemen are hobby bakers and they are amazingly talented, and we do have some professional bakers who are giving back among our 3,200 volunteers,” she said.

Jaclyn Dougan, a Family Advocate and Home Visitor for Middlesex Health, is the community ambassador for the Connecticut chapter.

“When she came across Cake4Kids, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get involved by pairing her passion for helping children and families with her favorite hobby,” said a Facebook post announcing the chapter.

It was a specific experience that began Jaclyn’s journey toward establishing a Cake4Kids chapter. At Middlesex Health she was working with a family experiencing difficulties and unable to afford a cake for a child’s upcoming birthday.

She began looking for resources to help in Connecticut, found Cake4Kids in California, and reached out to Julie Eades, the organization’s executive director, about a year ago.

The Connecticut’s chapter’s official first orientation was Nov. 12, and it’s already a thriving effort with 21 volunteer bakers on board and more reaching out to join.

“We have made quite a few cakes,” Jaclyn said, noting that the chapter has 12 cake requests for Dec. 23, and stressing that there are many other supporting roles for potential volunteers who love what Cake4Kids is doing but don’t bake.

Watch the NBC Connecticut video on the new Cake4Kids chapter

Requests for cakes come in from the partners of each Cake4Kids chapter, which in Connecticut are NAFI CT and the Compass Youth Collaborative so far, as well as from other agencies and service providers.

“They put in a request for the youth, specifying a cake, cupcakes, cookie bars or brownies, as well as flavor and theme, etc.,” Alison explained. The request is posted on the chapter’s portal for the volunteers to review and see who wants the assignment.

When the cakes get delivered, that’s when the magic happens.

“It’s really more than just a birthday cake,” Alison said. “These kids have had a lot of challenges in their lives. A lot of times people let them down. Foster kids can be moved around. They just don’t have the best start in their lives. They can’t believe that someone who doesn’t even know them has taken time out of their day to make them a birthday cake. It boosts their confidence.”

“The thing we really want people to know is we’re making an impact on the youth by showing them there’s someone who cares,” Alison added, noting that Cake4Kids also provides a boost for caseworkers. “When they say I’m bringing a cake and show up with it and it’s an awesome cake, it builds trusts. So when they have other issues to work on it’s a lot easier.”

“There’s one more benefit, and I’m saying it as a baker. It feels amazing to drop off a cake and know that you’re going to make a child’s day extra special,” Alison said.

Cake4Kids currently operates in California, Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Illinois, Virginia and the Washington, D.C. metro area.

“This March, right before we had to shut down for COVID, we delivered our 20,000th cake,” Alison said. “December will be biggest month ever, over 900 cakes, even though we’re only operating at about 70 percent because of COVID. At normal pace, we would have made 7,000 cakes this year.”

For more information on Cake4Kids Connecticut chapter, see the website, and explore opportunities to volunteer.

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Link to article

Cake4Kids Makes Sure Kids Have Birthday Cakes

NBC Connecticut
Sunday, December 13, 2020, 6:37 pm

Watch Cake4Kids Connecticut Ambassador, Jaclyn Dougan, talk to NBC Connecticut about the newest Cake4Kids chapter in Connecticut!

If the video above doesn’t work, you can watch the segment here.