Healthy Kids - Spring 2021

PAY IT FORWARD

Hope by the Dozen A family’s bake sale to buy toys for hospitalized children takes off

T

he Foote family really put the “dough” in “donation.” When a young neighbor was undergoing treatment at Rady Children’s Peckham Center for Cancer and

Blood Disorders, Mackenzie Foote saw an opportunity to teach her girls, Emery, 5, and Devan, 2, about helping others. They talked about what it would be like to spend the holidays in the hospital, and that sparked an idea—a bake sale to raise money to buy toys for patients at Rady Children’s. “We wanted to do something where we could give back,” Mackenzie says. They decided to sell cookies

“Then we went into making all sorts of cookies: chocolate chip, M&M, brownies—I bought so much butter!” Day in and day out, Mackenzie, Emery, Devan and the girls’ grandmother toiled away baking cookies, brownies, and muffins, packing boxes and running deliveries. Amazingly, she says some of their patrons offered up hundreds

for $10 a box and set an initial goal of raising $100. They spread the word with an adorable video on the family’s YouTube channel, The Kitchen Cub, and the orders came rolling in. In two days, they raised $2,000. Mackenzie contacted Rady Children’s about unburdening her overworked Venmo account, and the Hospital team helped set up an official fundraising page to handle the outpouring

THE FOOTES SURPASSED THE $20,000

MARK AT AROUND

or even thousands of dollars in exchange for only a couple dozen pastries: “I would reach out to everybody and ask them how many boxes, and a lot of the big donors would say, ‘No thank you on the cookies; we just wanted to donate.’” When all was said and done, the Footes had raised about $21,000—enough to buy a toy for each of the more than 500 patients at Rady Children’s. Mackenzie and the girls were in awe when they learned the final tally. “I was teary-eyed. I just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “Then Emery’s teachers found out and they played the video in the classroom. That was exactly what I intended to do—make a difference, obviously, but Emery really understood it, too. It was wonderful all the way around.”

TWO WEEKS — THAT’S A LOT OF COOKIES!

SWEET CHEFS Sisters Devan (left) and Emery (right and top) baked up a storm to help an ailing friend and other hospitalized kids

of support, which showed no signs

of slowing down. By the fourth day, the Footes had raised about $14,000, and they surpassed the $20,000 mark at around two weeks—that’s a lot of cookies! “At first I let them pick what kind of cookie they wanted to make, and their first batch was mint chocolate chip,” Mackenzie says.

32 HEALTHY KIDS MAGAZINE SPRING 2021

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