While roaming the halls and walking past the Grille Room, you may see tables lined with delectable baked goods. The question is, though, why are these goods being sold? This question is what Modern Language teacher and Head of Community Engagement Emily DeMarchena hopes to eliminate with the new bake sale policy, emphasizing quality over quantity of these sales. While many are frustrated with the policy change as the number of allocated bake sales for the school year is limited, the reasons behind this limitation are certainly valid, and the policy is meant to help Hackley students become more educated about their communities.
Hackley students are engaged community members, running numerous clubs and organizations. With this comes many opportunities and responsibilities, and most club leaders hope to help fund their organizations or raise awareness by running events, such as bake sales. These are complex fundraisers, though, as there is high demand but not many are allocated throughout the year. Over the past year, the service leadership team has modified its bake sale policy, which has both encouraged more education around systematic problems while also hindering students’ abilities to run many bake sales throughout the year.
Running a bake sale is fairly simple, but it takes lots of initiative from students. To get the process started, you must submit an extensive Google form explaining the reason for your bake sale as well as what you will achieve by running it. The form includes questions that get to the “why”, in terms of reasons that students are hoping to run bake sales, specific details about their plans, and how they plan on executing their sales.
“We want these sales to be student-driven, so the new policy and Google form help make sure students are taking the initiative,” said Ms. DeMarchena.
One main policy shift in terms of community engagement are the areas that Hackley students are allowed to fundraise for. This year, one of the requirements for running a bake sale includes the funds having to go to a local organization in order to maintain a strong connection to the social issue at hand.
“We try to meet the students where they are in terms of what their social issues they’d like to combat are, with the only caveat being that we ask for them to engage with a hyperlocal community partner,” said Mrs. DeMarchena.
All of the data and impact reports about how to effectively do community engagement work show that engaging in local organizations is more effective than not, as you are more closely connected to the community you are helping.
“This is not to undermine larger organizations who are doing amazing work, but if we do bake sales for these larger organizations, we have no idea where the money is going or have any connection to the receiver, so this is why we ask that students engage with projects that are in Westchester or adjacent,” said Mrs. DeMarchena.
Why have the numbers of bake sales been so limited at Hackley since the policy shift? The main rationale behind this shift is that quality is more important than quantity. It is more important that Hackley students buying the baked goods at sales know where their money is going, and that the organizers of these sales are fully educated on their organization.
“One of the intentions of the system is to create a space where the students are actually leading, in the sense that they are growing awareness on a social issue, requiring them to increase their understanding of the issue and how it manifests in our communities. Without this piece of the puzzle, you are just selling cookies to throw money at the problem,” Mrs. DeMarchena said.
Another reason the policy has shifted is that Hackley is a non-profit school, meaning that the school functions through donations from families, staff, and others. As a result, it is a lot to ask all of these people to constantly donate to other causes in addition to Hackley itself, like clothing or food drives.
“We ask a lot of the Hackley community. It got to the point where we were always asking for things, which isn’t strategically great for the school. Also, we want to have respect for the community and not expect things from them,” said Mrs. DeMarchena.
The new bake sale policy adds value to the community in that it encapsulates Hackey’s core values. By making sure that students are educated on social issues, as well as where their money is going, the new policy helps spread social and community awareness. While the downside to this policy is that the process of setting up a bake sale is more extensive and detailed, in the end, it should better our Hackley community.
