The Home Baking Association has once again had an active year promoting baking in both home and culinary kitchens. As we come up on 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 is 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.
-Presenting the Educator of the Year Award to one of the many educators creating innovative ways to teach baking skills.
-Developing new lesson plans from Educator entries.
-Baking and Milling Immersion Tour with FCCLA, multiple baking educator workshops, in-person and TV presentations and demonstrations to teach baking skills. Sharon and Charlene highlight your brands and direct participants to our websites for year-round baking information and recipes.
-Material sales – over $15,000 worth of Baking Lab Manuals, DVDs and teaching resources sold this year, largely tied to the presentations.
-Website development, updates and visuals focusing on links to member websites, to make HomeBaking.org the best place for accurate information for home and culinary baking questions.
-Re-writing A Baker’s Dozen Labs and editing the baking glossary. These are gold-standard materials for teaching baking skills for home and culinary kitchens and needed updating after several years.
-Observation of HBA’s 100th anniversary. Special events are planned for our annual meeting.
-Hiring Chris Kirby as our new Administrative Executive Director.
Now a few words about Charlene Patton and Sharon Davis, both of whom are retiring after years of service to the HBA. Charlene and Sharon have done far more than I can mention in this letter and much more than any of us know, but here are a few highlights.
Sharon started with HBA in September 1995, and has written or co-edited the majority of our printed and online teaching materials. These materials provide a variety of lesson guides for teaching home and culinary baking skills for preschool to adult educators. These lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations and videos offer baking best practices, food safety and teaching methods—ranging from 5 minute lessons to multi-week plans—to suit home, community, classrooms and media. Sharon has also made more than 500 presentations for HBA, developing coast-to-coast fame in the Family and Consumer Sciences world. When Sharon’s name appears on a program, the room is packed. In addition to teaching baking skills, she has helped develop and maintain HBA’s membership.
Charlene started with HBA in November 1997 and has done an excellent job running the association. She has had responsibility for its finances, for implementing its programs, and for the logistics of all our meetings. She has planned 25 annual meetings, negotiating costs, arranging for food and space, setting up outside events, and procuring speakers. Under Charlene’s leadership, we have had many meetings in memorable locations from coast to coast. She has always done a remarkable job at finding good value for us. In addition to running the business of the HBA, Charlene has also presented numerous times for us, in person, virtually, for video and on television. Like Sharon, when the name “Charlene Patton” appears on a program, it is standing room only for the presentation.
Please join me in thanking Sharon and Charlene for their years of dedication to the vision of the Home Baking Association: Growing the practice of home baking.
Roberty Harper, HBA President
President, Hopkinsville Milling Company
For additional information, contact:
Executive Director, Chris Kirby
E-mail: ckirby@homebaking.org
