Here’s today’s fun fact: If you’re baking a cake, you can substitute a can of Sprite for perishable liquid ingredients like eggs and oil.
That’s one of the special ingredients in birthday party kits assembled and distributed by SSM Health Monroe Hospital in Wisconsin and donated in February to two local food banks. The kits are meant to ease some of the stress on families who have too many obligations and too little time and money to meet them.
The idea to create the kits came about a year ago, when Rebecca Bordner, a communications consultant at SSM Health Monroe, was scrolling through her TikTok app looking for ideas for her daughter’s first birthday.
“People were putting together these little kits that were going to people who may or may not have the capability to celebrate their child’s birthday,” she recalled. “I saved it and thought, well, that’s cool.”
Later, she learned that the hospital’s Mission Action team was asking employees for grant proposals that would help the community.
“I kind of had a light bulb moment that this would be a really cool opportunity to get some funding to make some kits of our own,” Bordner said. “And here we are, just having donated 200 kits.”
The Mission Action team gave Bordner a $3,000 grant for the project. The kits are packed in aluminum baking pans. In addition to the versatile Sprite, they include confetti cake mix, candles and balloons, streamers, birthday plates, and novelty items like stickers and temporary tattoos, a birthday button and a bracelet. They also have a birthday card that the family can sign for the guest of honor.
“Having that day where it’s really about you and just getting to celebrate and be around people that you love is what makes a birthday so special,” she said. “It is more or less an opportunity to be able to help make something special for a child, but also, from a parent’s perspective, it could alleviate some of that financial stress that could be associated with needing to plan a birthday party for your kid.”
The grant was more than enough to cover the cost of the 200 kits, but getting enough ingredients proved to be a challenge. “You can’t just walk into a grocery store and say, ‘Hey, I’d like to buy 200 cake mixes,” she said.
Luckily, a local Piggly Wiggly came through. “They called their distributor on a Tuesday and said, ‘Hey, can we get these in on Saturday?’ We were able to place the order and it was a super smooth process,” Bordner said.
“Everything came to my house and my husband was laughing at me because I had a lot of boxes, but it was all for a really great cause.”
About 20 volunteers from the hospital assembled the kits over a lunch hour. The hospital donated them to the Green County Food Pantry in Monroe and the Green Cares Food Pantry in nearby Monticello.
Getting the kits into the hands of party givers is going smoothly, according to Marcia Voss, who is board president of the Green Cares Food Pantry.
“We have 275 families (who use the pantry) with a total of 650 people, so there’s quite a few possibilities for people who need a birthday kit,” Voss said. “It’s an extra for clients, something standard that most food pantries don’t have.”
And, she added, the kits aren’t just for children.
“You think of birthday parties for kids, but sometimes our elder clients actually appreciate it more because there may not be a big family celebration,” she said. “To have something to share with just another one or two people makes it special for them.”
Bordner is looking ahead to making more birthdays special.
“There were definitely a couple of moments in the process where I was a little overwhelmed and I kind of questioned what I’d gotten myself into,” she said. “I can admit I went a little over the top. But this is definitely something that we could do again in the future.”