A Grade 9 D.P. Todd Secondary student, along with her two friends, ran their own bakery for a week to raise money and awareness for the Prince George Red Dress Society.
Evie Erickson-Murdock and her friends Renee White and Dexter Gagnon stayed after school and worked during lunch hours to bake treats they could sell to their fellow students and teachers.
The project was called Eve’s Bakery and was supported by a Youth Action Grant from the McCreary Centre Society.
“You have to raise awareness for something, and I thought Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women was good because it is a really big issue,” said Erickson-Murdock.
“It’s not only women it’s missing and murdered Indigenous people.”
She said after the Prince George Red Dress Society gave a presentation at D.P. Todd Secondary on May 5, she wanted to do something to give back and to educate people to break harmful stereotypes.
“This cause is important to me because I am Indigenous, and I know a lot of women and people in my family have gone missing,” said Erickson-Murdock.
“I want people to feel more safe. It is just scary to think that my people go missing way more than other people do.”
The students baked brownies, sugar cookies and made hot chocolate, Jell-O and even served ice cream. They also held a draw for a cake and ended up raising about $500 dollars from the bakery.
“It has been fun, and we goofed around in the kitchen, and we made some fun memories,” said Gagnon.
“I loved knowing that it will be going to the Red Dress Society and used for something important, so it made me happy to know that,” added White.
The students then proudly presented a cheque with their proceeds to members of the Prince George Red Dress Society.
“This young lady who we would consider an amazing leader in our community has internalized this issue and she has done something positive with it so on behalf of the society we can’t thank you enough for being part of a systemic change,” said society president Tammy Meise.
“You took something near and dear to you and you did something amazing with it and that is an amazing leader.”
Meise announced the society will be using the funds to reinvest the money in Erickson-Murdock and will be hiring Eve’s Bakery to do the cupcakes and baked goods for the event it’s planning in September.
“Sometimes all we need is for others to believe in us and to take those big steps,” said Meise.
“As a member of the Prince George Red Dress Society we decided you know what we need to uphold these leaders and we need to invest in them.”
The Youth Action Grant which funded this project is available to provide support for project which are entirely student-led.
D.P. Todd’s community school coordinator Erica McLean helped Erickson-Murdock fill out the application for the project funding.
“The McCreary Society itself emailed us back right away and said how can we support and were eager and excited to hear the outcomes because they to realized what an important opportunity this is to support our passionate young leaders,” said McLean.
“It is so incredibly powerful for them to just develop themselves as leaders and to take those strengths that they already have and share that with the world because that is the best way they can raise awareness and make the changes they hope to see,” said McLean.
Erickson-Murdock said that even though running a bakery for a week was a lot of hard work, she still hopes to open her own bakery one day.
“I hope in the future I can open up my own bakery downtown maybe and I want to give back to charities especially the Red Dress Society and other things that benefit my people.”
