Drop In & Decorate

A different way to celebrate Mothers Day, in southeast Massachusetts

When a library and a vocational school collaborate on a Mothers Day treat for a local center serving women who have suffered domestic violence, here's what happens:

Special thanks to Sharani, who organized this second Drop In & Decorate® event at the Southworth Public Library, and to the culinary arts students from Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School who baked the 280 cookies that were donated to The Women's Center in New Bedford and Fall River.

Please read all about it, with more photos, here.

World Arts Day at Providence school includes cookie decorating and donation to local food pantry

 

When an art teacher at Providence Country Day School in East Providence, Rhode Island, brought her young daughter to the Drop In & Decorate® event hosted by Rhode Island School of Design in January, she realized that her middle- and high-school students might like to do a bit of community service with cookies, too.

She invited us to participate in World Arts Day -- a day when artists in many disciplines, including painting, video, culinary arts, photography, printmaking, contra dance and more, offer short, hands-on workshops. Students can sign up for the workshops that interest them, and each session creates a project: a mural, dance, meal, Japanese scroll painting, or even a short film.

Board member Lucia Watson and I mixed up some of our special icing colors, and teachers and parents at the school baked cookies. We hosted two sessions, for a total of 25 students, and taught the basic techniques of decorating with Royal icing.

Within minutes, the students were creating amazing cookies, with designs ranging from beautiful flowers to aliens, abstracts, yin-yang, and tic-tac-toe.

And at the end of the day, the 130 decorated cookies were donated, as all Drop In & Decorate cookies are -- this time to the Pawtucket Soup Kitchen.

 

Drop In & Decorate loves to work with schools on community service events. If you're a teacher, parent or student interested in bringing cookies-for-donation to your school, please let us know.

Missouri college students decorate and donate for St. Louis Ronald McDonald House

 

Kella teaches Interdisciplinary Studies at St. Louis Community College, where she recently hosted her second Drop In & Decorate® community service event, decorating and donating more than five dozen cookies to Ronald McDonald House of St. Louis.

Read more about the event and see Kella's great slide show on her blog, A Girl and Her Oven.

 

Thanks to Kella and to everyone who decorated -- your cookies are beautiful and made many people happy!