Great Chappaqua Bake Sale Marks a ‘Decade of Deliciousness’
On a Saturday afternoon 10 years ago, Charlotte and Sophia Spiegel and Rebecca Blum were young children out on South Greeley Avenue with their moms selling a relatively modest assortment of cookies, cupcakes and brownies to anyone who wanted a snack.
This Saturday, the three girls, now Horace Greeley High School sophomores, will have the Great Chappaqua Bake Sale up and running once again at the Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival. At the festival’s inception, its organizers asked them to bring their bake sale to their event, which where they will be for the seventh consecutive year.
Since then, the effort has taken off. The Great Chappaqua Bake Sale has raised about $215,000 and provided some 2.1 million meals for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry Campaign.
As Blum and the Spiegel sisters have gotten older – and have fully taken over operation of the bake sale – they have come to realize the importance of what they started.
“It really opened our eyes about how less fortunate some kids are and how fortunate we are, that we don’t have to go to school every day and eat with meals programs and go on (school) break and wonder where our next meals are going to come from,” said Sophia Spiegel.
To mark the milestone, they have called the 10th anniversary bake sale campaign a “decade of deliciousness.” They have started a No Kid Hungry club at school to recruit classmates to help fight childhood hunger. They plan to create other efforts to raise money for the cause, including participating in World Hunger Day in the spring.
Blum and the Spiegels have also created a cookbook that includes the most popular treats from their 10 years of bake sales.
“We’re trying to think of all these new things to do throughout the year,” Blum said. “We just don’t want to have the one bake sale. We want to spread it throughout the year.”
For this Saturday, there will still be a large selection of treats available for purchase. Similar to previous years, the girls have enlisted community volunteers to bake and to help man the tables in two-hour blocks while soliciting contributions of baked goods and raffle prizes from area merchants.
There will be more than $13,000 worth of prizes to be raffled off.
“We want to share with other kids the importance of charity and giving back,” said Charlotte Spiegel.
For more information about the Great Chappaqua Bake Sale, to buy raffle tickets or learn how to volunteer, visit http://join.nokidhungry.org/goto/decadeofdeliciousness.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/