WTNH News 8
By Alyssa Taglia
Wednesday, January 20, 2021 06:47 am Eastern (Updated: January 20, 11:30 am Eastern)

Think back to your birthday as a kid. You’re surrounded by family, friends, presents, and of course, birthday cake.

Now, imagine not being able to blow out your candles and make that special birthday wish. Unfortunately, that’s the reality for many children.

That’s why one Wethersfield woman has made it her mission to make sure kids in need get an extra special birthday cake.

NBC Connecticut
By Angela Fortuna
Thursday, January 14, 2021 / Updated January 14

What started as a gesture to provide birthday cakes to some foster children and at-risk youth has turned into something the creator could never have imagined.

It all started in Sunnyvale, California when Libby Gruender read an article about a young girl in foster care who received her first-ever birthday cake. After hearing about this, Libby made it her goal to make sure the children in her community had cakes to celebrate their birthdays.

What Libby started in 2010 as an effort with very few volunteers baking 13 cakes for a few agencies turned into a huge operation that now has hundreds of volunteers…

Hartford Courant
By Susan Dunne
Monday, January 11, 2021 7:57 am

When Jaclyn Dougan, a family advocate with Middlesex Health in Middletown, met with one of her regular families last year, the kids were excited that a birthday was coming up. But the mom was stressed, because she couldn’t afford a birthday cake.

“In a program I work in, we can’t bake or give anything like that. So I started to look at other resources available for this, which is something a lot of our families face,” Dougan said.

Dougan discovered Cake4Kids, a California-based nonprofit whose volunteers bake and decorate birthday cakes for kids in foster care, group homes, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and other refuges from unstable living situations…

NAFI CT
Monday, December 21, 2020

The young women in NAFI Connecticut’s residential programs at the Touchstone Campus in Litchfield are writing a recipe for finding new sweetness in life by brightening the lives of other youth facing challenges.

As part of NAFI CT’s partnership with the new Connecticut chapter of the national nonprofit Cake4Kids, the young women at Touchstone hope to transition from being recipients of Cake4Kids sweet deliveries to joining the corps of volunteer bakers who make cakes, cupcakes, and more for youth in foster care, group homes and other settings.

Touchstone, where services address the unique needs of adolescent females…