Culinary Arts

In this modern day and time, there are limited occasions for youth, and especially at-risk youth, or low-income and vulnerable adults to participate in cooking programs. The paucity of these programs creates an opportunity for us to develop community-based cooking programs that we will implement and evaluate with the goal of providing invaluable life skills and food literacy to these groups. The BYE nonprofit organization plans to develop and implement a community-based culinary arts skills and food literacy program for youth and adults as well to improve the livelihoods of residents in the area.

Our desire is to help a new generation of women, men, and families who have not otherwise had the resource or training to develop a livelihood and gain the opportunity to move forward into to a positive financial position using culinary skills.

BYE’s Goals with the Culinary Arts Program:

Develop a professional understanding of culinary arts, a specialized segment of the hospitality industry that will provide immediate career opportunities.
Learn industry-specific skills as identified by the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation Competencies as well as by the US Department of Labor's SCANS Report such as critical thinking, analytical skills and research skills designed to develop managerial competencies.
Learn safe food handling, food presentation, and proper equipment use.
Become familiar with the purchasing, storage, and handling of a wide variety of food products.
Master new career skills which will assist participants in moving into culinary arts Chefs and other food preparers and management opportunities.
Be equipped to take advantage of entrepreneurial activities that are prevalent in the food industry.
Be prepared for further study and to take and pass certifying examinations administered by Hygiene's Food Handler Certification, National Restaurant Association's ServSafe@Food Handler, ServSafe@Alcohol, ManageFirst Certification and accrue points toward American Culinary Federation (ACF) certification.
Learn management principles of a variety of commercial and non-commercial foodservice operations.
To increase health literacy through health fairs for community residents’ with onsite health screenings, farm visits, presentations on diet/nutrition, and cooking demonstrations.
The program objectives will be to provide applied food literacy and cooking skills education taught by local chefs and registered dietitians.

We will augment the classes, cooking sessions with field trips to community farms and food wholesale distribution facilities to foster an appreciation and understanding of food, from 'gate to plate.' Participants will also visit a range commercial and nonprofit culinary and cooking venues. We will administer pre-test and post-test cooking skills and food literacy assessments to all participants. We will conduct in-depth interviews with all trainees to help evaluate and improve future programming.