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10 POWERFUL ways to spread bread and "bake a difference"
1. Bake your favorite bread, tie it with a note of hope, inspiration
or gratitude and then offer it to a local hero or someone in need.
2. Invite a group of friends over to bake. Enjoy each others
company while baking your favorite bread recipes, together.
Collectively, decide where to spread the gift of your breads in town.
3. Whip up a BREAD DRIVE in your neighborhood, school, church,
workplace or community. Ask people to bake their favorite bread and
wrap it with an upbeat message, poem or artwork and then drop it off
at a designated location. Maybe it's a bin in the school lobby, a
large bread basket in your office or church, or maybe at a local
business. Or if you feel ambitious and creative, build a large
bread box for bread deposits.
4. Plan a Spread the Bread birthday party for your child. Invite
kids to your house to bake bread, play with dough. You can purchase
baker hats or aprons at Oriental Trading Company online really
inexpensively. If you'd like special "Got Bread?" t-shirts from
Spread the Bread, we can order those in advance. Make up a craft
table so that the kids can make wonderful creations to tie to the
breads: origami, paper flowers, cut outs, cards—be creative have
fun. Kids can have a conversation about just where and to whom
they'd like their breads spread. Once the bread is hot out of the
oven, the kids love to wrap the breads and get them ready for
delivery. You can decide to deliver the breads as part of the party
or do it after and tell them what happened in your thank you note.
5. Host a community BAKE OFF! Ask people to bake their favorite
bread, then enter the bread with the recipe in the BAKE OFF
contest. Also ask that an extra loaf be delivered, too, so that
that loaf can be spread back into the community. Ask leaders/kids
in your community to be judges or get your local paper involved.
Ask local merchants for prizes. This is always a really fun bread
event during the holidays. It's a win-win. People are engaged and
more breads are spread. A gingerbread house bake off is also very
popular, and the gift of the houses are priceless.
6. Remember the animal heroes and animals in need in your
community. Host a Spread the Biscuit event. Bake homemade biscuits
for the local animal shelter. Again, you can host a Biscuit Drive,
build a birthday party around this or get your school or community
involved in your biscuit outreach efforts.
7. Make a BREADMOBILE float for your local parade and ask the
community to bring breads to the parade. Have some people walk
behind the breadmobile so that they can collect the breads and load
them in the mobile as the parade progress. Parades move pretty
slowly, so there's time to collect and get the breads in the
BREADMOBILE.
You decided just what kind of breadmobile to create. Maybe a local
landscape company has a truck that you can decorate, maybe a local
car dealership will drive on of their NEW vans, maybe it's your
family truck or van, maybe it's a flatbed float…After the parade is
over, breads can be spread to area shelters or police and fire
stations. Many of the local parades celebrate or heroes, so it's a
great way to offer respect and gratitude to our veterans and
soldiers.
8. Host a "Got Bread?" event with a local merchant or baker. Maybe
designated one day a week or month to be a community bread -
spreading day. Remember WEDNESDAYS were Prince Spaghetti Day?? Maybe WEDNESDAYS are BREAD DAY!! Ask people to drop off loaves of bread –especially sandwich bread for shelters-and then make sure that all the breads are tied with notes of hope, inspiration or gratitude.
The notes really make the breads come alive. Food pantries
especially love the notes tied to the sandwich breads. You be amazed
at how easy it is to just ask people in your community to buy an
extra loaf of sandwich bread when they are shopping. It can make a
huge difference. Once you collect the breads, you then decide where
those breads will be spread locally.
9. Host a fun "SandWITCH-a-Thon." This is especially fun during
Halloween. Ask local grocery stores, bakeries, markets, caterers,
restaurants, etc to donate a tray of sandwiches. Have volunteers
(kids love this) dress up like witches and pick up the sandwich
trays. They can either deliver them directly to a pre-determined
organization in need or drop them back to a central site and
another "witch" team can deliver them. On and on it goes. It's so
simple and so powerful!
10. The concept of spreading bread is as pliable as the dough. Look
at your life and try to find a way to make this "bake a difference"
concept work in your life.
If you're a coach of a baseball team or you son or daughter are on
the team, ask kids to BATTER UP! Bake a favorite bread, decorate it
to make your favorite baseball team and don't forget the WINNING
note. Decide as a team just where you'll spread your breads—it's a
homerun.
If you are busy with work life, host a "Take Your Bread to Work Day"
and have your colleagues bake bread at home or during lunch in the
company kitchen and then spread your breads as an office.
If you're a teacher or a camp leader, use our free BREAD Starter
Kits to work history, science, math, technology, career development,
recycling, composting, GREEN baking and more into your classroom
lessons. The kids will love it.
If you are part of a church community, ask your community to drop
breads off after Sunday service and you can spread them near and far…
Have you lost someone dear to you? Spread bread in their memory.
Maybe you bake their favorite bread and attach a note, poem or story
that celebrates their spirit. Is someone around you sick? Spread
prayer breads to ask people to pray for them.
You DEFINE how to spread bread and to whom!
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Have fun "baking a difference!"
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Food pantries are experiencing a 30 percent to 400 percent increase
in demand because more families and individuals are now forced to
rely on food banks due to rising food costs, fuel costs and
unemployment.
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