Springville girl baking cookies to help rescue child slaves


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SPRINGVILLE — The apron, cocoa powder, salt and flour are only a few ingredients Jenny Wallentine needs to make her cookies and muffins.

“I learned how to bake from my mom,” the 12-year-old said, “and from a bunch of cookbooks friends and family gave me over the years.”

For Jenny, baking is serious business.

“Her cookies are very high quality,” said Melissa Wallentine, Jenny's mother. “She even went through 10 or 15 batches to learn how to get just the right amount of crumbs on the toothpick so that they'd be moist but all the way done.”

The young baker also has a big heart, which is the other ingredient she pours into baking cookies, bars and muffins for a good cause.

Last year, a visit to her grandparents’ house introduced Jenny to the unsavory world of human trafficking. Wallentine remembers her daughter listening intently to the article from the National Geographic magazine.

“There was a story about a little boy who was taken away from his family and was forced to do a bunch of work for other people in Africa,” Jenny said. “They would force him to sleep outside, and a couple of times he almost got attacked by rattlesnakes and scorpions.”

“I was worried the content was heavy for her," Jenny's mother said. "She was 11 at the time, and I thought is she going to understand human trafficking? Is it going to be scary to her? But she was willing to sit there and talk about it.”

Jenny later learned more about child labor and sex slavery in school.

“Sex trafficking: that really stood out to me considering the girls were the same age as me,“ Jenny said. "It wasn’t just America; it was all over the world.”


I want to go as big as I can to help the children because quite a bit of people do it but in my opinion, not enough. I think the more we get the better to help these children.

–Jenny Wallentine, home baker


Soon ‘talk’ turned to ‘action,’ and the young baker decided to do something to help.

In 2014, outside her elementary school, Jenny held a bake sale with the help of the community and mom, of course.

“I’m the pit crew. I set up tables. I clean up kitchens, and set up canopies so they don't get too hot when they do the bake sale,” Wallentine said. “I go to the health department and get the license and verify that they’ve cooked in the manner that’s sanitary.”

Dozens of Jenny’s homemade bars, cookies, and muffins were a hit, and “people gave us more money than what we were selling them for,” she said.

Last year’s bake sale earned $160.80. Jenny donated the funds to The Fund for Global Human Rights, a nonprofit organization that helps to rescue child slaves around the world. The group sent her a handwritten thank-you note, along with photos of the kids Jenny’s donation will help.

“They have absolutely nothing,” Jenny said. “When I think of just one thing that I have and want a bit more, I’m like, ‘I’m so selfish to want that when they have nothing.’”

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The young baker knows the brutal world of human trafficking can seem complicated.

“The parents are willing to sell their children, but I understand that some of the parents didn’t have a choice,” she said. “Sometimes they didn’t even know their child was kidnapped and sold.”

This year, Jenny cooked up a plan to create a perpetual online bake sale to keep the money rolling in to help rescue these enslaved children.

“I want to go as big as I can to help the children because quite a bit of people do it but in my opinion, not enough,” she said. “I think the more we get the better to help these children.”

Jenny established a website, www.jensdesserts.my-free.website, to sell her sweet treats.

She also plans to sell them door to door – not only for sales, but also to educate her community about some of the most vulnerable humans in the world: children.

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