Bake Sale at Linköping University, Sweden

Fika is a central concept in Swedish culture. Fika means having something small to eat, often together with a cup of coffee or tea. While looking for some way to raise funds at my University I got inspired by the bake sale the kids.R.ok team in New York hosted some months ago. If a bake sale was a success in the US, having a bake sale in this fika-craving country should be even easier.

So said and done, I started spreading my idea among my friends to see if anyone was willing to help me out. The Christian student organization signed up as soon as they heard about it, and also expressed an interest in helping with more events like this. Friends, my small group, someone’s classmate – a lot of people came together and baked for us.

In the beginning of December we put up a little stall outside the University Library, selling our fika. Overall is was the gingerbread tasting muffin, the chocolate cakes and apple pie that attracted most attention. Or selling and selling – we were more or less giving away sweets, asking the hungry students to give any size of donation in return. As it was right before Christmas time people in general were in a good mood for any kind of charity donations. Some who passed by even insisted on donating without taking anything to snack on.

Just a few weeks before the sale we got a Kids.R.Ok Swish account – a new but already widely used app in which you can easily transfer money to and from all major Swedish banks. Less and less people carry cash with them around, and for many students Swish has become like a second wallet. Many fika-eager student were happy to find out they could pay with Swish, and in total the transferred amount was almost the same as what we collected in cash.

 

The bake sale was a success. The team came together in a good way and we received lots of help with the baking. People enjoyed both refreshments and the chance of helping out with carrying out the kids.r.ok mission: helping children to a safe education.

If you are interested in hosting a kids.R.ok event on your own, or to get involved in our upcoming events – feel free to contact me!

Susanna

Event Manager

kids.R.ok Sweden

susanna@kidsrok.org