William King, right, 15, of North Smithfield, a client at Sargent Rehabilitation Center, gives Darrell Pilon, 5, of Providence, a cookie from the basket of decorated and wrapped holiday cookies that Will and other clients and staff at the center decorated.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

WARWICK — On the cream-colored sugar cookie, occupational therapist Holli Diohep painted a backward baseball cap –– black to match the one worn by the boy sitting next to her.

Out of a plastic bottle, she squeezed a red mouth of icing. A bright blue dot of an eye. Her profile of 15-year-old William King took shape on the round cookie.

As she painted, the therapist chitchatted with William, a North Smithfield boy who suffered head injuries in a fall this summer and attends the neuro-rehabilitation day program at Sargent Rehabilitation Center. Diohep wanted a splash of yellow hair peeking out from under the cap, to “brighten it up.” William’s hair is brown.

“I used to have blond hair when I was a kid,” he offered.

“See, it’s not too far from the truth,” she said, satisfied yellow would work.

William concentrated on a more elaborate design as he painted Diohep on what might have been a traditional gingerbread cookie for a more conservative decorator. He was perfecting a technique he gladly demonstrated –– pour on the icing, grab a toothpick and “just swirl it around.” The result drew oohs and aahs from decorators around him.

Staff member and client, the two decorated cookies last week –– not your average frosted cookies, but real works of art –– as part of a volunteer effort called Drop in & Decorate.

The concept is simple. Bake cookies. Gather friends, family or coworkers together to decorate them. Donate them to a local food pantry, emergency shelter, senior center or other nonprofit group.

The rewards, however, are grand, says the Glocester woman who launched the program that’s in its seventh year locally and appears to be taking off in other parts of the world as well. Drop in & Decorate not only builds camaraderie among decorators, but also creates bridges between cookie makers and people less fortunate than themselves, founder Lydia Walshin says.

The Sargent cookie decorators donated close to home — to children at Sargent’s day school, which offers a range of therapy services for ages 3 to 21, and to a food pantry. William was one of a few clients who personally carried the baskets of individually wrapped gems to the children.

“It feels good,” he said afterward.

He always likes to share, said the soft-spoken boy who’s hoping to be back at his old school by January.

At the Sargent Center, Walshin’s friend and longtime cookie volunteer Lucia Watson brought the concept to her workplace. A speech therapist in the neuro-rehabilitation program, Watson said it works on many levels for the clients. From an occupational-therapy perspective, it helps with hand-eye coordination. Cognitively, decorating the cookies requires planning and attention. In a program that helps clients become independent after an accident or illness, it’s functional.

“It’s real. It’s not make-believe,” Watson says. “It’s really wonderful to have that feeling that you’re giving back. People really like to feel like they’re giving back. Not to mention that it’s just fun.”

Walshin, 55, is a full-time food blogger (at www.theperfectpantry.com) whose cookie idea has spread within a vast international community of food bloggers. Decorating gatherings have taken place in 15 states, Germany and India, Walshin reports at www.dropinanddecorate.org. All you’d need to replicate the idea exists on that site.

In Smyrna, Ga., a food blogger who is an assistant administrator at a middle school learned of Drop in & Decorate through Walshin’s blog. Christina Arpante saw it as a way for teachers at different grade levels in a large school to build new friendships and collegial relationships. With a cookie gathering once last year and once this holiday season, Arpante and her crew have given away 300 cookies.

Arpante has never met Walshin, but she grew up in Boston and attended college and graduate school there. She often took road trips to Newport and Narragansett — and “always felt a connection” to Walshin, whom she said she’d love to meet one day.

Walshin says her idea evolved by accident, when a friend and Walshin — who says she’s “not a cookie person” or a baker — saw Martha Stewart demonstrating what’s called a flooded icing technique. A quest to replicate Stewart’s “really beautiful” cookies resulted in 100 cookies the friends didn’t want to eat. They gave them to an agency in Boston that provides emergency transitional housing for Latino families.

Now, Walshin hosts Drop in & Decorate’s flagship event each year at her home for friends and family. Last week, they delivered 725 cookies to the Foster and Glocester food pantries, the Crossroads Rhode Island family shelter in South Providence and the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which gives the cookies to six member shelters.

The effort needn’t be so big, though. If you’re baking for a cookie swap, make and donate an extra dozen, Walshin recommends. Host a cookie-decorating birthday party. Choose a time of year when donations at shelters may fall off — Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Halloween or Thanksgiving. Agencies still need help after the winter holidays, especially in the current economic climate.

At the Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Executive Director Deborah DeBare raves about the “community collaboration” that helps people understand –– in a short amount of time –– how important it is to help people in need. The beautifully wrapped and designed cookies — in the shape of fire trucks, eyeglasses, trees, mittens and more — taste delicious and inspire creative, imaginative play for children of all ages.

“I think what lights up in the faces of the children is the joy that the cookies are so much more than just a cookie,” DeBare says. “They’re actually toys and cookies and gifts all embodied in this one thing. And what I see in the faces of the mothers is the appreciation that somebody cares.”

kbramson@projo.com