WOY Glenda Moore brings hope, warmth through Kind House Ukraine Bakery
Exemplifies kindness through her fresh goods, humanitarian actions
The executive director of Kind House Ukraine Bakery, Glenda Moore is “baking a difference” in the lives of Amarillloans and also the lives of Ukrainian people suffering throughout their war-torn country. For her continuing efforts to help these communities, she has been named the 2025 Amarillo Globe-News Woman of the Year.
Moore will be honored, along with 2025 Man of the Year Four Price and other award recipients, at an in-person luncheon ceremony in January. The awards are presented by FirstBank Southwest.
Moore first visited Ukraine in 2013, after her daughter had visited an orphan camp in the country and urged her mom to go. During her trip, she found out that by age 16, youngsters could go to college or trade school if they had a family to help them. They didn’t have the simple things in life like pillow cases, sheets or necessities parents normally take care of when their children leave the nest.
Moore said, “I fell in love with the Ukrainian people,” she said. She told her mother that she wanted to help make a difference in their lives. Her mother advised her to take up baking (which she was at first reluctant to learn) and she began to bake her wonderful breads and pastries at home, leaving them on her porch with a metal safe for donations.
So dedicated to her cause, Moore would go to her mother’s house at 4 a.m. to make cinnamon rolls before school. She would take the hot, fresh rolls to different schools to sell them. She and her mother, Glenda Sue Hobson, began to see money coming in for their cause.
“The needs of the Ukrainian people are always on her mind. As the war in Ukraine continues, Glenda never gives up. She has traveled back to Ukraine as often as she can to take proceeds from the bakery. She makes regular posts on social media including Facebook,” one nomination letter said. “Glenda is tireless. She is always willing to share her story with humility and empathy for the Ukrainian people. Glenda has received several honors for her work, but her reward is knowing she is making a difference –one cinnamon roll at a time.”
As the word spread, neighbors began to donate flour, sugar and butter along with everything else she needed to keep her charity going. As her business grew, she began to run out of space and began to think of new ways to expand.
She found out that the war in Ukraine actually started in 2014, in the Donbas area, closest to the border of Russia. After it started, people had no natural gas or electricity. They didn’t even have a local grocery store, nor the means to provide for themselves. Those that had money or relatives fled the villages, and all that remained were the disabled and elderly.
Moore set up a distribution plan to help with the disbursement of money, which was used to buy coal, medicine, food and other supplies. She quickly discovered the gratitude of those living in Ukraine and said, “The more I helped … the more they were grateful.” She baked out of her home for nine years before she left Amarillo ISD, where she had been an administrator, to open Kind House Ukraine Bakery (KHUB) with a large group of volunteers.
“It was nerve wracking at first, but I believed we’d still have a place to live and wouldn’t miss a meal,” she said. “Amarillo has been incredible.” She said support poured in, especially after Ukraine was attacked by the Russian government in 2022. Moore decorated her bakery with photos of Ukrainian families who have been helped or changed by the proceeds of her baking. “We were already helping people in the Donbas region,” she explained. But when the fighting increased, they stepped up and helped more than 3,000 individuals to safer areas.
Money from her baked goods has been turned into essentials in the war-torn country, some of which she’s delivered personally. In a March 7 story from Amarillo Globe-News, she recalled an elderly woman living in a bombed-out village who tried to repay her with the small handful of candy – likely her only luxury.
“It shows you how grateful Ukrainians are,” she said, “and why we keep doing this.”
Her warmth and kindness spreads to others she works with and sells to. Recently, her character was featured in a fictional novel by Amarillo author King Hill, called “Lost & Found.” In the novel, Hill dedicates it to her with these words: “This novel is dedicated to all those wonderful souls in this world who daily give love and kindness freely and who understand and celebrate the magic in living a life of awareness.”
“Glenda Moore, who founded the bakery to help the Ukrainian people, is kindness incarnate. We became friends. I appreciate and embrace her cause to help the people of Ukraine,” Hill said. “Glenda embodied all the characteristics of my heroine, so she became my lead character, Emma McCurdy. I needed a good image for the cover of the book. So, Glenda has an adopted Ukrainian daughter named Zhanna Logveneko, and Glenda and her daughter graciously agreed to let me use her image on the cover of the book.”
The book, written with youth in mind, is filled with lots of twists and turns, with exciting discoveries as a foster care runaway finds a new life of love challenge, magic and belonging. The free-spirited Mariah becomes a new person and discovers amazing friends, both animal and human though her adventure. She finally finds a home and discovers her own hidden abilities and talents.
Moore said her bakery’s 501(c)(3) mission sometimes causes confusion because it officially focuses on humanitarian aid overseas, but it’s never stopped them from serving their own neighbors.
The Amarillo South Rotary Club said as its president, Moore promotes the Rotary motto, “Service Above Self” and has twinned its club with a Rotary Club in Kiev. The Amarillo club also said she manages more than 80 volunteers at the bakery and has motivated AmTech Rotary Interact Club members to raise funds to build underground schools for Ukrainian children to keep them safe from Russian bombs. Moore organizes borscht and baklava meals in Amarillo to raise funds as well.
In October, Moore’s efforts turned even more to her own community during the federal government shutdown. When Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments lapsed for millions of Americans, Moore went to work. She launched “Soup for Souls,” an outreach effort offering free soup and bread to anyone who needs a meal. The bakery is also collecting canned soups to give directly to families facing food insecurity.
“If you are hungry, we want to feed you,” Moore said in an Oct. 30 Globe-News article, adding that the bakery has long helped people quietly, but the shutdown prompted her to go public. “If you’d like to help feed someone, we’d love to have your help too.”
Moore’s compassion for those missing food assistance stems from personal experience: She relied on WIC benefits as a young mother to help feed her family. Her empathy also comes from loss: Moore’s sister lived homeless in Amarillo for 25 years before passing away four years ago — an experience that deepened her respect for local service groups. “I’m grateful every single day for the people who cared about her,” Moore said in the Oct. 30 article. “When people say, ‘You only help Ukraine,’ they don’t realize how much we’re doing here too. We care deeply about Amarillo.”
She has been featured in many magazines, stories and video clips as she continues her mission to give a hand up to those who are oppressed, in danger or just in need of a good meal.
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