Around the State: Baylor Campus Kitchen awarded; Students build in Bartlesville

Student volunteers and garden managers harvest fresh produce each week from the Baylor Community Garden at Ninth Street and James Avenue. The national Campus Kitchens Project presented its “Going Beyond the Meal” Award to Baylor University’s Campus Kitchen during the 2016 Food Waste and Hunger Summit. The national group specifically cited a Baylor Campus Kitchen event called Roots Day for senior adults, which brought together senior adults for a day of cooking and garden demonstrations, senior adult aerobics and more. The event included a community health fair, with local organizations providing resources, information and encouragement for senior adults and helping them connect with additional services. Seniors also were able to sign up for a free four-week gardening course provided by Baylor Campus Kitchen at the Baylor Community Garden at Ninth Street and James Avenue. Founded in 2008, the Campus Kitchen at Baylor focuses on food waste and alleviation of hunger in Waco. Student teams recover food from university dining halls; prepare healthy, nutritious meals for nonprofits in Waco, including Mission Waco; and harvest fresh produce from Baylor Community Garden, which is used in the meals prepared by students each week. On average, the Baylor Campus Kitchen recovers more than 10,000 pounds of food per year from dining halls, and last year its volunteers prepared and served more than 6,000 meals to local nonprofits. Baylor Campus Kitchen volunteers also teach health and nutrition classes in Waco at Restoration Haven and Calvary Baptist Church and work with the Texas Hunger Initiative and local school districts to deliver meals as part of the mobile summer meals program.

Students work on a Bounce home rehab project.Ninety middle-school and high-school students volunteered with Texas Baptists’ Bounce student disaster recovery program to rehabilitate homes in Bartlesville, Okla., for families in need. First Baptist Church in Bartlesville provided the students hot meals and a place to take showers. Bounce worked in partnership with Washington-Osage Baptist Association to provide project assignments and construction materials.

James Fikes, chief executive officer of Fikes Wholesale Inc., and Kim Fikes, chief administrative officer of the business, made a significant gift to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor toward construction of a performing arts center. A chamber hall in the center will be named in their honor.An anonymous donor offered the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor a $5 million challenge grant to help fund construction of its performing arts center. Together with funding already secured, a successful challenge would enable the $20 million facility to open fully funded in August 2017. The 40,725-square-foot building will feature a 554-seat performance hall, along with a 2,000-square-foot chamber hall named in honor of James and Kim Fikes of Temple, two of the first donors to respond to the challenge grant with a substantial gift.

Robert and Cheryl Mangrum Robert and Cheryl Mangrum created an endowed scholarship at Howard Payne University to benefit students who are history majors, involved in the band or band fraternity/sorority, or residents of Taylor County or Dallas County. He is professor of history and government and university historian at HPU, and she is associate director of admissions. They dedicated the proceeds of his book, For Howard Payne My All: 125 Years of Christian Higher Education and Service, 1889-2015, to the scholarship fund. For Howard Payne My All is available for $30 on DVD or USB flash drive from the HPU Stinger Store here.