Listen To This Story
Many foster youth, refugee kids and other underserved children go without a birthday cake because of cost or other barriers. The Eastern Nebraska chapter of Cake4Kids is making sure those kids have a dessert on their special day.
Stacy Newmaster leads the chapter. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was sent to work from home. With no workplace to bring her baked goods to, Newmaster started looking for people to share her baked goods with. She found Cake4Kids and saw it as a way to help kids with her skills.
“It just absolutely hit me in the heart,” she said.
Cake4Kids started in California in 2010 serving foster youth. Volunteer bakers coordinate with local nonprofits to find kids in need of treats for their biggest milestones, like birthdays, graduations and adoptions.
“Then other groups got added to work with more agencies,” Newmaster said. “It's also homeless shelters, anybody that deals with families that are at or below poverty level, domestic violence or trafficking shelters – as well as refugees added as the most recent group.”
The Eastern Nebraska chapter started in 2021, serving the Omaha area. It later expanded to cover Lincoln and parts of western Iowa.
“Recently, we hit about 250 registered volunteers in the area,” Newmaster said.
About 30 partner agencies work with Cake4Kids Eastern Nebraska. Newmaster said the chapter has made 1,800 deliveries since it opened.
As more families face food insecurity and higher prices at the grocery store, Newmaster said more requests are coming in. Money they’d spend on a birthday cake may already be allocated to regular meals, or they may not have time, electricity or equipment to bake with.
“We know that a lot more people are struggling,” she said. “At the national level, we hit 100,000 requests all-time earlier this year, and every ambassador meeting that we have, they're updating us on numbers, and every month our volumes are increasing nationwide.”
Last year, the Eastern Nebraska chapter delivered about 600 cakes. Newmaster said she expects about the same amount of deliveries this year, but other areas of the country could be seeing larger increases in their requests.
Two bakers and Newmaster met up for a cake dropoff Monday at partner organization CASA for Douglas County.
Claudia Deeb of Omaha has been baking for Cake4Kids since 2022. She thinks she’s made about 265 cakes.
“I’m retired, and I do four or five different volunteer things,” Deeb said. “I used to do birthday cakes for my son when he was little, but I never did the layer stuff, and I thought, well, that might be fun. I got a little carried away early on.”
Deeb has an art background, and she likes filling the creative requests. Kids are allowed to customize their treats – from flavor to color to theme.
That’s how Deeb ended up making a “6-7” cake, which played off a TikTok craze that swept through elementary and middle schools last year. Kids would say “six-seven” and make a juggling motion with their hands. It was such a social media storm that Dictionary.com designated “67” its word of the year.
“The description was ‘six-seven,’ a big one in the middle, then little ones around the outside, and lots of sprinkles,” she said.
Deeb has made everything from crab-boil cupcakes to beetle brownies.
Lori Molzer of Lincoln is newer to the volunteer baking, but she’s already made seven or eight cakes.
“It's just fun to do. I like to bake. I've always baked a lot,” Molzer said. “I do a ton of cookies. I love it when they request cookies, because I have a gazillion cookie cutters.”
Both women say it’s been fulfilling to turn a hobby into something that makes a difference in kids’ lives, and they enjoy hearing about the reactions to their cakes.
Bakers can sign up to take requests on the Eastern Nebraska Cake4Kids Facebook group and coordinate drop-offs.
CASA is a child welfare organization that advocates for foster youth in the court system. Advocate Coordinator Mary Eulig said foster kids often take what they’re given, and having control over a cake design can bring some normalcy to their lives.
“When you say to them, ‘No, really, if you could pick anything to have on your birthday cake,’ and they get to do that, it's huge,” Eulig said. “It's not just a cake. It's symbolic of what they really want and wish their whole life could be.”
Eulig said caseworkers know when birthdays are coming up and can bring up Cake4Kids to foster parents or plan group celebrations to let kids know they're cared for.
“It helps us pay attention. It's a birthday – it's a big thing,” she said.