Cooking For A Cause

Cooking For A Cause is a charity club that was started this year by Lauren Hillanbrand with help from her vice presidents Emma Foytack and Sartia Mesa-Marin.  

Question 1: What is Cooking For A Cause? 

Answer 1: Cooking for a cause is a community service-based club. We create different dishes/baked goods to donate to various outreach. Every month members will attempt to make new recipes for a designated group for the month. This can vary from hospital workers, healthcare workers, homeless shelters, drug rehab centers and so many more! This club is a fun way to volunteer with friends to help those in need within the community.

Question 2: What made you start cooking for a cause? And what makes you passionate about this topic?

Answer 2: I personally enjoy it with a passion as it brings peace and joy to my life. I know many friends of mine share the same values in the kitchen. I wanted to make an environment where people could share this love and participate in doing good for our community. Many don’t realize how many people in our community go unnoticed or neglected, whether that is a simple thank you, meal or sweet treat that can positively impact their day!

Question 3: What are your club's goals and what is your timeline of achieving them?

Answer 3: As we are a new club we want to establish ourselves and have consistent meetings as our overall goal. We want to hold monthly meetings while fundraising for ingredients and donation to different charities in the area. We are also highly focusing on attracting students to participate in our club. This will spread awareness to how we attempt to help our community. While we are grateful for all the members we have, we hope to increase by 30 new members by the end of the school year. We are also attempting to be a non-profit by the end of next year. 

Question 4: Cooking For A Cause is a newer club, what have you learned or what skills have you strengthened through starting this club? 

Answer 4: We have definitely strengthened communication skills because we have to plan with each other and the food lab teachers on what days work for meetings, who is buying what supplies, and who is transporting the baked goods to the charities. Also, we have strengthened our organization because we have to coordinate with each other, our club advisor, our members, and the outreaches we are donating to. We really have to focus on our planning, time management, and attention to detail in order to succeed. 

Question 5: How can we as a community help this cause?

Answer 5: The community can help with this cause by donating, volunteering, promoting the club to others so we can have more volunteers to help out more with baking or bake sales. Other clubs can also help out by contributing and partnering with us like key clubs did. The greatest way they could help us with this cause is by encouraging their friends to join, it’s a fun activity for a great cause so having many people come and help out is great. 

Some additional information: 

We have sister clubs at Hendy. 

You can contact us: 

Insta: wce_cookingforacause 

Email: 26hillanbrandl@student.wcasd.net 

Schoology code: 3N6F-3BQF-XN9WR

Thank you to Lauren Hillanbrand, Emma Foytack, and Sarita Mesa-Marin, for agreeing to do this interview!