A 24-Hour Bake-A-Thon

On Oct 1, we're making 1,100 bags of granola for Food4Kids Waterloo Region

On October 1, I’m hosting a charity Bake-A-Thon and community fundraiser to make 1,100 bags of granola for Food4Kids Waterloo Region.

In today’s post I’m going to share a bit about why I am doing this and how you can help.

Last week a report was released that shows food insecurity for Canadian children has increased by 29% – with Canada ranked 81st out of 193 countries on the global KidsRight Index. Canada is the only G7 nation without a national school-food program.

With school starting this week, it’s an important time to highlight this tragic failure of Government – that in one of the world’s leading nations children still go hungry every day.

I grew up in a fairly typical middle class, immigrant home. My parents moved to Canada from Yugoslavia in the 1970s looking for a better life – both from small, poor farming communities. Neither went to school past what we call grade 4. Neither had a lot growing up, they both struggled a lot.

They often didn’t have enough food when they were kids.

In Canada, my dad worked in construction, working on hockey arenas – the most Canadian thing he could do. My mom worked in factories, then as a custodian for elementary schools for the Waterloo Region District School Board. I remember how often they fought about the cost of groceries. My mom often spent extra, to buy food to take to families who didn’t have enough, to the kids at the schools she worked at, to new families to Canada. While my relationship with my mom had many challenges, this was one of the best sides of her.

She taught me that if you have the ability to help someone, you should. If you have extra, or someone doesn’t have any, it’s probably worth sharing (it definitely is).

My parents did their best to provide for 3 kids and for their community. We had everything we needed and we never went hungry.

But that wasn’t true for kids at the schools my mom worked at. That wasn’t true for kids I grew up with. And it wasn’t always true for my sister’s kids.

One of my sisters had her kids pretty young – her first at 19. Like me, she had a complicated relationship with our mom, so she spent her first few years as a single mom living on her own, trying to make it work. My sister relied on social assistance programs for housing, food, and income while she figured out how to be a young, single mom. It’s a more complicated story and not mine to tell.

I often think a lot about that time and how I could have been more involved – but I was only 16. I had my own problems. I’m 37 now, my oldest niece is an adult (and volunteering at the Bake-A-Thon!) and the youngest is heading into high school next week. The social assistance programs my sister had access to made a huge difference in her ability to feed her kids, to be a good mom, to be independent – and it helped me see at a young age how important social assistance programs are to enabling people to move forward in their lives on their own terms.

This impacted a lot of how I think about the world: how food is political, how we need to build a society for everyone, and how we can all be a force for change in our communities.

A groundswell in the community

Where I live, in Waterloo Region, over 3,000 children live with chronic hunger. Food4Kids Waterloo Region is a charity that works to address this – providing meals to severe food insecure homes, where children often go weekends without meals. Food4Kids Waterloo Region is currently only meeting 50% of the true need in the Region, serving only 75 of 151 schools.

I first heard about Food4Kids Waterloo Region through my friends Jared and My, owners of the Humble Lotus Sushi Market, by eating at their restaurant. They are incredible community-oriented people. Since their first day in business, all of the tips at the Humble Lotus have been put into a fund and donated to Food4Kids Waterloo Region.

Each month Jared and My make a post on Instagram to share what they are donating. There was a striking post last month when they donated an entire carload of canned chicken and shared how quality protein is the number one challenge for Food4Kids Waterloo Region to help provide to these children.

This was around the same time I was starting my granola business, and as I was learning how important protein is to my own health.

That same week I met with Cameron Dale, the manager of the Kitchener Market. Cameron was sharing how the Market thinks about the vendor mix – how important accessible food is to our community. Cameron shared that 1 in 4 kids in Canada face food insecurity, which is only getting worse with rising food prices.

All of this got me thinking: I am now making a kid-friendly, high protein, low sugar, packaged cereal that my friend’s kids love to eat. Can I help with this problem? The challenge is that I’m only one person with a 4 week old business. I don’t have revenue or extra granola to donate. I don’t have employees or a team to ask to volunteer.

But could I get a bunch of people together to help?

I did some math and figured out we could make 1,000 bags of granola in 24-hours with the commercial kitchen space I work in.

I asked Jared and My first: would you want to help me make granola to donate to Food4Kids? They said yes before I finished asking the question – and offered to feed everyone who agreed to help. Next I asked Thompson Tran, owner of Wooden Boat Food Company, where I make granola – would he let us use the space? Thompson said yes immediately.

The idea grew quickly from there. On August 23, I met with Lorri Detta, Executive Director of Food4Kids Waterloo Region to pitch the concept: instead of a Tel-A-Thon to drive donations, we would host a 24-hour Bake-A-Thon. Live in front of the community. We could make 1,000 bags of granola.

Lorri had one ask: can we make it 1,100 bags? One bag for every kid Food4KidsWR serves.

Yes we can!

We picked a date – October 1 – and we agreed on a recipe that meets school safe requirements. Like all of my granola it is high in protein, low in sugar, vegan, and organic, so it can feed as broad a community of Canadians as Food4Kids Waterloo Region serves. This recipe has oats, olive oil, maple syrup, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, cinnamon, orange zest, and salt. With 8g of protein and 3g of sugar per serving. Tasty enough that kids will eat it right out of the bag.

With Lorri’s go-ahead on the event, I reached out to my friend Elaine Decleir, of Joy Media, for advice on how to run this kind of event. Elaine is an events professional, I thought she would give me pointers – instead she said she offered to partner on the event with me. 

Elaine’s vision turned the Bake-A-Thon into a community fundraising event.

Less than a week later, on August 29, I launched the marketing campaign: Granola Daddy’s 24-Hour Bake-A-Thon.

By September 1 we already had over 20 volunteers registered and dozens of individual donations to Food4Kids Waterloo Region – I’m blown away by the community support.

You can still register to volunteer, but we have enough registered to pull off the event!

Let’s dream big

As outlandish as it sounds to make 1,100 bags of granola in one day, it only makes a small (but meaningful) impact. 1,100 bags of granola covers breakfast for one week. What about lunch and dinner? And the other 51 weeks of the year? And the 50% of schools that Food4Kids Waterloo Region can’t yet serve? How do we help them?

My hope is that we can secure an event sponsor who will donate to Food4Kids Waterloo Region directly – if you’re interested in this please contact Elaine.

We have the costs of the event covered: I’m personally covering the costs to produce and package the granola. Jared and My are feeding all of our volunteers. Thompson is providing the space. Elaine has donated her time and is working with the amazing local food community to host a breakfast and dinner fundraiser at Wooden Boat on October 1 during the Bake-A-Thon (more details soon). Brent Murphy is doing media relations for the event.

If you’re an Internet Food Person who wants to help raise awareness, a politician, or someone in the news who wants to get involved to help bring attention to Food4Kids Waterloo Region, please reach out to Brent to chat. 

You can help

Now I want to share a bit more about Food4Kids Waterloo Region, the community they serve, and how you can get involved.

First, consider a cash or food donation:

• A $35 donation feeds one kid for one week

• You can also donate food, there’s a list of most needed items on their website

• You can volunteer with Food4KidsWR

Please also check your workplace polices to see if they have charitable donation matching programs which can double your donation. Many companies also offer days off to volunteer.

If you’re unable to make it to the Bake-A-Thon, please consider donating directly to Food4Kids Waterloo Region on their website. (You can select “In Celebration of…” and write “Granola Daddy” in the dropdown if you would like to connect it to this event, but that’s entirely optional.)

About Food4Kids Waterloo Region

Together with the community, Food4Kids Waterloo Region currently provides healthy food packages to 1,100 children living with chronic hunger in severe food-insecure homes on weekends and breaks.

Consistent hunger, even just over weekends and extended school breaks, can set a child back for life.  Kids who are consistently hungry can lose hours of productivity per school day, fall behind in math and reading, exhibit higher rates of behavioural problems, and have higher levels of anxiety and depression. The consequences of hunger extend far beyond the classroom.

Although children leave our program as their families are no longer in need, they are quickly replaced with our ever-growing waitlist of children and schools who need our program. Many children do not have access to the nourishment they require to thrive mentally, physically, or socially. School nutrition programs help, but these programs only exist during the week. 

At Food4Kids Waterloo Region, we believe every child deserves an equal opportunity to thrive, learn, and achieve their full potential. Children who eat over the weekend and during school breaks exhibit improved memory, grades, reduced absenteeism, and less behavioural problems, anxiety and improved overall mood. They can focus on their lessons and participate more fully in class, and relate to their peers better – and they have a better chance of growing healthy mentally, physically and socially, later in adolescence and adulthood. Together, we can create a brighter future for our community, by providing healthy food to our most vulnerable children.

Imagine a community where every child has the nutrition they need to thrive, learn, and achieve their full potential. That's the transformation we're working towards. When you join us, you become a part of this transformation.

How we help:

• Teachers within the 50% of schools we currently serve identify vulnerable children living with chronic hunger and contact us for help.

• Every weekend of the school year and during school breaks, we provide nourishing food to children ages 1- 14.

• Every Friday, food packages are delivered to the schools by volunteers. Each bag includes approximately 20 items (6 meals and snacks) including proteins, fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, cereals, grains, and other healthy items.

• Once at the school, educators discreetly hand out the bags and children happily take their bags home, since many go home to little or no food.  

We also provide food during the 90 days of school breaks - winter, summer and spring, statutory holidays and PD days. 47% of our food packages meet at Halal menu, and 13.5% of our bags are allergy specific. The children we support represent many cultures and ethnic backgrounds, including new Canadians, Metis, First Nation, People of Colour and Caucasians.

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I hope you will come out to the Bake-A-Thon.

We’ll be announcing more about the Community Fundraiser soon, but for now block your calendar on October 1 for some very fun, family-friendly events for a good cause.

Marko