Otterbein student-run organization Kneading Minds recently donated $3,000 to Westerville Area Resource Ministry (WARM), a local food pantry and family outreach center. The donation was the result of two years’ worth of fundraising for the group. 

“It’s quite amazing that college students, who are focused on their higher learning goals, have gathered together to recognize the need for hunger awareness by investing funds directly into the community they live and learn in,” said Dana Lawrence Forsythe, WARM’s director of development and communications. “We are so grateful for this extremely generous gift and continued support from Kneading Minds.” 

Established in 2009, Kneading Minds is a student-run service program associated with Otterbein’s Honors Program, where it began as a student’s Honors project. Any student can volunteer with Kneading Minds to bake and sell fresh bread on campus, with proceeds used to fight food insecurity in Westerville and on Otterbein’s campus. 

Normally, Kneading Minds holds two Bake Days each semester, when volunteers spend the day baking different types of bread, making anywhere between 60 and 120 loaves each day. Otterbein students, faculty and staff then purchase the bread. Due to the restrictions in place for COVID-19, Kneading Minds has not been able to bake this semester, so they used funds from the last two academic years to make the $3,000 donation to WARM. 

“A campus-run organization like ours donating to a Westerville non-profit exemplifies how much Otterbein is tied to our surrounding community,” said Allison Gould, student coordinator of Kneading Minds. “We are part of a much larger, reciprocal community in which everyone is supportive of each other’s efforts.” 

According to Forsythe, a donation of this size will be the equivalent of 12,000 meals to those experiencing hunger insecurity within the Westerville City School District.  

Gould is confident that even though the organization can’t do things the same way they are used to, they will always work towards ending community hunger. 

“Hopefully we will be able to get back into the kitchen to bake bread and raise funds for WARM. In the meantime, we will continue to live up to our mission of fighting food insecurity any way possible — pandemic or not!”