Having co-ed or sister clubs is something uncommon in the schools community. Usually, clubs founded by schools students only work within their own community and not with clubs at any other schools.
However, over the summer, the Elevated Cooking Club’s co-presidents-—junior Asher Babilla and senior Daniel Weinstein—reached out to Hockaday students in order to start an Elevated Cooking Club at Hockaday. Babilla and Weinstein believed a sister cooking club would be popular at Hockaday, and Hockaday seniors Katherine Shoup and Meredith Burkhart agreed.
Babilla believes creating a sister club would assist in involving more people in both the two schools communities and to bring in more new members.
“I think some people will join the club, especially freshmen, because they see it as a way to meet new people,” Babilla said. “Which outside of sports, games and maybe dances is not an easy thing to do.”
Outside of more people getting involved with the club, expanding to a sister club also connects to communities and opens up more events for the Elevated Cooking Club to cook for.
“It lets us do more events, like the Hockaday coffee houses,” Babilla said. “We wouldn’t necessarily cook for the Hockaday Coffee House in the past, but now with a Hockaday club as well, we can cook for them.”
Orchestrating events between two clubs in two different schools has never been easy, Babilla and Weinstein have been able to keep the clubs working together. The two clubs meet at school to discuss their future plans and then cook together at a student’s house over a weekend.
“Daniel and I are in contact with their club presidents,” Babilla said. “We give them notices like ‘Hey, Saturday we are doing an event. We want anyone who wants to join.”
Communication is key for the two clubs to coordinate their joint cooking and events at both schools.
The St. Mark’s Elevated Cooking Club plans to continue to work with the Hockaday sister chapter throughout the rest of the year and further in the future. The clubs plan to cook for events in both the two communities, especially the coffee houses.
Elevated has already cooked for the first coffee-houses for both schools, and they plan to continue this tradition as they further develop the co-ed nature of the club into the future.
