The Home Baking Association has once again had an active year promoting baking, in both home and culinary kitchens. As we celebrated our 100th anniversary, we can all be proud of the work we are doing to promulgate baking skills in bakers of all ages.
• Bake to Give Maddie Kruse Youth Award – a new award highlighting youth who use baking skills to benefit their communities. Thank you to Maddie Kruse’s family for allowing us to name this award after her.
• Educator of the Year Award – given to one of the many educators creating innovative ways to teach baking skills.
• Developing new lesson plans from entrants for Educator of the Year.
• In-person presentations demonstrating how to teach baking skills. Sharon and Chris highlight your brands when appropriate at these events and direct participants to your websites for further information and recipes.
• Material sales – over $15,000 worth of lesson plans sold this year, largely tied to the presentations.
• Web-site development, particularly focusing on links to member web-sites. Our website is the best place for accurate information about home and culinary baking questions.
• Hiring Chris Kirby as our new Administrative Executive Director
• Creating a member recruitment video and guide
• Creating a new logo
Our new director has done tremendous work this year, supporting the in-person presentations we continue to make as well as website and social media work, all while transitioning the corporation from Charlene’s home in Topeka, KS to Oklahoma City, OK. We also want to acknowledge the stellar work done by Sharon Davis making presentations on behalf of HBA and by Nicholas Beatty on our website and social media platforms.
We are working on an exciting opportunity with the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) to create a baking credential that a student or teacher could earn by demonstrating mastery of skills and knowledge. This should give the credentialed student an advantage when applying for jobs in the baking space and the teacher greater confidence that s/he has command of the material.
I look forward to continuing to work with you to teach baking skills.
Roberty Harper, HBA President
President, Hopkinsville Milling Company
For additional information, contact:
Executive Director, Chris Kirby
E-mail: ckirby@homebaking.org
