First, picking up the dropped ball
Before I say anything about the 2019 season, I want to take a moment to pick up a ball I dropped back in the Fall by not recognizing an incredibly huge support contribution that the Park Oven is a grateful recipient.
Students from the NSCC’s Baking & Pastry Arts Program at the Akerley campus held a bake sale fundraiser will all proceeds going in support of the Park Avenue Community Oven. This is the 2nd straight year the students have held a fundraiser for the Park Oven, and this year raised a whopping $850 in a single go!
The timing of this support could not have been better as over the winter, unfortunately, we lost our amazing firewood sponsor from the last 7 years. Because of this financial support, we will now have the funds necessary to ensure the Park Oven has all the firewood needed to heat our hearts and cook our food for another season.
On behalf of all the other Park Oven organizers and volunteers, a rousing big thanks to the students and NSCC for their support. We appreciate it!
2019 schedule released
The time has arrived – it is time to open the oven again! We are just waiting on some pesky but very necessary liability coverage to kick in and we will be ready to fire things up. Keep an eye on our social media pages for notice of any further delays but if all goes according to plan the first open oven will be Saturday, May 18th from 12-3pm.
See the full 2019 season schedule here: 2019 Hours & Availability
New booking form (and the return of Owen!)
We are quite pleased to finally update our booking page with a new front end for you to submit booking requests through. The new booking page will make it much easier to select the date and time you wish to book and submit your request. It will automate many manual processes on our end, which is great news for our volunteers.
If you have visited the oven before, you have probably met Owen (even if you don’t know it). He was previously the Park Oven coordinator for a number of years and is returning this season to help out with handling booking requests. Owen will be taking this responsibility over from myself and James allowing us more time to focus on other initiatives like volunteer recruitment (more on that in a moment). A big thanks to Owen for taking this massive commitment on again.
You can find the new booking form here: Bookings
Open Bread
Speaking of Owen, he is working on bringing a new monthly program to the Park Oven. For now, details are on a knead to dough basis. But stay tuned to Open Bread for more details.
2019 volunteer training & orientation session schedule
With the continued growth in the popularity and demand to use the Park Oven, we are doubling our efforts this season to recruit and attract civic-minded people who would like to get involved with our project and help out.
We have posted the dates for upcoming volunteer training sessions which will be starting shortly and happening over the next few weekends. If you had already signed up for the volunteer distribution list over the winter, you should receive a notification via email sometime within the next few days with additional details.
For anyone else interested in getting involved (come on, it is a pretty sweet volunteer gig if I do say so myself) here over to our volunteer page and sign up for a session.
Looking for a new wood sponsor
We continue to look for a new firewood supplier to partner with. While we are prepared and able to purchase the firewood necessary for the 2019 season, in the long run finding a firewood sponsor is important to us.
Glad we could get together.
Bernie
Coordinator, Park Avenue Community Oven