Two enterprising young ladies from Shepper-ton decided to run a cake sale in September to support the charity Baraka Community Part-nerships.
Poppy McKee, aged 6 and a pupil at St Nich-olas School, suggested the idea and ably as-sisted by friend and neighbour Phoebe Sutton-Hall, created an invite and delivered it to local homes and drummed up support with the bak-ing. The day was glorious and the girls were overwhelmed with the interest and generosity. It was very much a community event, with neighbours, family and friends involved. It was all carried out with todays must have ingredients of social distancing and sanitiser! Within the first hour the cake supplies had dwindled so it was with relief that someone came with extra cake and home made jam to sell. The event raised a total of. £400, much more than expected.
Baraka was co-founded in 2007 by Poppy’s dad Andy McKee (you may know him from Fresh gym). Andy had his eyes opened to the inequality and poverty of communities in Laos and Zambia during his work there with Exodus Travel some 15 years ago. The chari-ty aims to improve education, healthcare, wa-ter and sanitation, things we take for granted. Since it started Baraka has put in 42 rural water systems, 193 toilet blocks, 74 class-rooms and put 220 Zambian children back to school.
Andy says “At Baraka, we take care to get to know our schools, communities and children. We like to create partnerships with our com-munities and ensure there is buy-in to every-thing we do”. Projects are therefore instigated by locals themselves and they get involved in works.
All the money raised from the cake sale will go towards helping impoverished Zambian children access a better education.
To find out more about Baraka visit the web-site www.barakacommunity.com or email andym.baraka@gmail.com.
(Photos thanks to Amanda Sutton-Hall)