Helping the community is a piece of (cup) cake

MANILA, Philippines - Giving in to your sweet tooth isn’t as selfish as it seems. Take 21-year-old Alex Eduque, for instance. She loves cupcakes. She is also the founder of Move.org, non-profit organization Habitat for Humanity’s partner in developing early childhood education in their communities. To date, Habitat for Humanity has erected 500 homes and schools, but for sustained development, more needs to be done.

“From there we didn’t want to stop,” says Simon Tantoco, Eduque’s partner at Move.org. Because Habitat for Humanity’s mandate is limited to building physical infrastructure, Eduque set up Move.org to complete its development initiatives. “In our communities, crime rate was high due to the fact that people didn’t have livelihood and education.”

Eduque’s love of cupcakes resulted in a friendship with Cupcakes by Sonja’s Sonja Ocampo. One day, she met up with Ocampo, business partner Anne Gonzales, and Cupcakes by Sonja marketing executive Chloe Romero with an order bigger than the usual.

“She started telling us about their efforts in Move.org and of course we were super interested!” Romero recalls. Eduque invited her, Ocampo, and Gonzales to their Move.org pilot school called MovEd in Navotas to teach the students how to decorate cupcakes.

Looking around, Ocampo and Gonzales realized there was more they could do. “Feeding programs come and go, and food is nourishment,” Gonzales says. They then brought their baking team to the schools and taught the students’ moms how to make pastillas to be sold for extra income. They were a hit among the residents, but more importantly, the mothers gained a sense of purpose and were encouraged to become more resourceful.

Determined to keep it going, Cupcakes by Sonja teamed up with Move.org to launch cake cups, serving the fluffy, sweet, and creamy goodness of cupcakes in a glass cup. It comes in three variations: tres leches with strawberries, coffee caramel biscoff crunch, and milk chocolate and hazelnut praline. There’s a cake cup for every preference, so we can all help this #sweetcause.

Five percent of the sale of each cake cup will be donated to Move.org for construction and equipment costs to build a kitchen for the MovEd school in Navotas. They aim to raise P30,000 in three months.

“For us to build a kitchen means to continuously sustain children who need food so they can go to school,” Ocampo explains.

Building a community isn’t a piece of cake, but a cake cup can help, whether you want to help the #sweetcause or simply have a craving for something sweet.

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Cake cups for a #sweetcause are available at Cupcakes by Sonja at Serendra Piazza, Bonifacio Global City, Shangri-la Plaza Mall East Wing, Ortigas, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati, and Glorietta 1, Ayala Center, Makati.