Nerine is making life a cake walk

A bad experience in life spurred Nerine Gardiner to launch her cake-gifting initiative to make lives sweeter.

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Johannesburg - After a bad experience, Nerine Gardiner decided in her heart that the world was a bad place in which to live.

But all that changed following a conversation she had with her former boss. She decided to pull herself out of the dark space by baking cakes and giving them to the less fortunate.

“My ex-boss told me ‘the moment you stop seeing the good in other people is the moment you lose the ability to be good yourself’,” said the 27-year-old copywriter.

“I then spent the next few months looking for good in people and found a lot of comfort in the small things people were doing for each other.

“I wanted to be the good that I saw, so one day I decided to use what means love, comfort and happiness in my family – cake.”

That was the beginning of the Girl With Cake blog which has seen Gardiner baking delicious cakes and walking the streets of Cape Town and Joburg looking for people with whom she can share happiness.

“I usually just get in my car and drive until I find someone who is starting on a night shift, or someone who looks like they might have had a bad day.”

Gardiner also keeps a list of people who have been good to her, people who inspire her, people who have thankless jobs, and people who are going through a hard time, whether from illness or personal loss and she distributes her cakes to them.

She said one of the highlights of her Girl With Cake project was spending a morning with the girls from the organisation, A Girl Like Alice, which looks after girls from impoverished backgrounds by giving them mentors to guide them, a shoulder to cry on and teach them life skills.

“We spent the morning at Forest Farm Centre for Adults with Cerebral Palsy and the girls iced cupcakes with the patients, while we all spent the morning learning how to interact with people who are different from us.

“It was amazing to see young girls suddenly become adults and all the patience and kindness that filled everyone,” said Gardiner.

She gives out cake once every fortnight when her full-time job allows.

“What I try to do is to encourage others to reach out. That’s what Girl With Cake is all about – to show people there’s value in kindness and to encourage them to reach out in their communities and start seeing the people we so often overlook,” she said.

Gardiner has baked and distributed in her personal capacity more that 54 cakes and through the initiative is learning more about people in her community.

“The cake has become a way to connect – a conversation starter with the recipients – and through those conversations I’ve become more aware of how people end up where they are, how easy it is to take a wrong turn in life and how we have no right to judge others.

“We now have people from the UK, Belgium, the US, Kuwait, Dubai and Australia, who have started reaching out in their communities. And not only with cake.”

Gardiner said she planned to make giving cake a family tradition when she has her own children.

“Even when the blog is history, I’ll still keep doing it.

“It’s changed my heart and my attitude so much.

“I want that for my children and for myself. For everyone, really,” said Gardiner.

The Sunday Independent