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Cookie Fundraiser Report - November 25, 2017


Darron Dai


Members of the Bay Area student organization Global Leadership Initiative (GLI) were touched by severity of the Santa Rosa Wildfires. They reached out to offer help to the fire victims, especially to those students who lost their homes in the fire.


Small fires fueled by extreme winds merged into six massive fires, burning more than 200,000 acres, destroying 8,900 structures, and killing 43 people.


The biggest fires were in Sonoma and Napa counties. The official state incident report shows they started within 15 minutes of each other, from 9:45 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 8, 2017.


The most deadly and destructive of them all, was the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa. It took 23 days before the raging wildfires were contained.


Through Santa Rosa wildfires, many Global Leadership Initiative members were touched by severity of the situation and wanted to offer our help in relieving the fire victims.



Over the Thanksgiving break, Global Leadership Initiative held its annual Cookie Fundraiser event to raise funds for the Napa Fire victims, specifically the community surrounding Maria Carrillo High School. In order to raise awareness of our fundraiser, Mona Li, our art designer, composed a flyer to catch local attention. Through this, we sold pre-orders of boxes of ten cookies each. On November 25th, over 50 GLI members arrived at the doorstep of Roy Lin’s house in Dublin. After holding a short training session on how to make the cookies, the volunteers began to work. In groups of three and four, they mixed flour, sugar, baking soda, and numerous other ingredients to create the cookie dough. The dough was then passed on to another group of volunteer that scooped the dough into round balls and let them rest before the cookies were put in the oven. After baking the cookies, the cookies were handed off to the final step in the chain: the boxing station. Finally we distributed the boxes to the people who supported our fundraiser. 


In total, GLI sold around 2000 cookies. We received an additional $450 donation from our members. Additionally, we collected $110 of coins from GLI households. With the donations and profits from the cookie sale, we ended up raising a total of $2000, which we donated to Maria Carrillo High School. They made sure to deliver the check before Christmas to brighten the holiday spirits of the fire victims.


Maria Carrillo High School responded, thanking GLI for its donation. Rachel Wittenberg, the leader of the fundraiser, wrote back to GLI, thanking them and sharing information concerning the distribution of funds.

“Thank you so much for reaching out. And we are so thankful for [GLI’s] donation. The money will likely go to students who can’t afford prom or yearbooks this year.”