Activity time: 90 minutes

Materials for Activity

• Cookies and cupcakes
• Paper plates or napkins
• Price labels
• Container for cash, and money to give as change
• Poster board and markers or other sign-making materials
• Information about the organization the proceeds will support
• Closing song lyrics from Session 1
• Optional: Animal cookie cutters

Preparation for Activity

• Solicit volunteers for a bake sale. Encourage parents to bake with their children for the event. Make the sale as "kind" (and green) as possible: encourage the use of fair trade and organic ingredients, use eggs from free range hens, include vegan baked goods (made with no animal products). Ask bakers not to use any nuts as ingredients, and to bring a written list of the ingredients in each item they bake. Optional: Give animal-shaped cookie cutters to parents who will bake for the bake sale.
• Familiarize yourself with the suggested organizations so you can briefly explain to the children what each organization does when they are making their selection.
• Together with the religious educator, select a time and place for the bake sale, such as during coffee hour at your congregation, a local coffee house concert, or a local community festival.
• Announce the bake sale to the congregation. If appropriate, invite the board or other governing body to designate the non-pledge portions of one Sunday morning offering to the organization the children selected; if possible, have the children make an announcement during the worship service.

Description of Activity

By raising funds to support animals in crisis, participants act with kindness in caring for other living beings.

Explain to the children that you will host a bake sale to raise money to help animals. Tell them briefly about the different organizations you can support and have participants vote to select an organization. Or, tell the children about the organization you have selected.

Have participants help make signs to promote sales, put price labels on baked goods, and help sell items. Donate proceeds to the organization you have selected.

You might donate to:

• A local animal shelter or wildlife rehabilitation organization
• An animal welfare organization, such as the State Humane Association of California (SHAC), the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NJSPCA), or the New-York based American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)
• Stubby Dog, an organization "focused on changing public perceptions of pit bulls and dismantling the associated stereotypical thinking."
• An equine protection or rescue organization, such as Habitat for Horses or a small, family rescue such as Blaze's Tribute Equine Rescue in Oklahoma
• The Gorilla Foundation
• The Elephant Sanctuary or Save Elephant Foundation
• The National Wildlife Federation
• The Wild Animal Sanctuary
• The World Wildlife Fund
• The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

At the end of the bake sale, gather as a group and process the activity with questions such as:

• I wonder how our actions today showed kindness.
• I wonder what else we could do to help animals.
• I wonder how the money we raised might make a difference in the making more kindness in the interdependent web of life.

Say, in these words or your own:

As Unitarian Universalists we believe it is important to take care of all of the living beings in the web of life because we are all connected to each other.

End the activity by singing, "We've Got the Whole World in Our Hands," inviting the participants to add verses such as "dolphins and the whales (in our hands)" or "the cats and the dogs (in our hands)" with corresponding motions.