Youth Culinary Classes & Equipment

The most delicious fundraiser campaign! Healthy cooking classes for youth aged 2 thru Middle School!

We offer fun, hands-on, from-scratch STEM-based healthy cooking classes to after-school and in-school programs for students aged PreK thru middle school. Our classes create a solid platform providing a lifetime of adventurous eating and purposeful life-skills. Classes focus on kitchen safety, knife skills and vegetable, fruit and equipment identification. Our students cook up-- and eat-- dishes like Spanikopita, Sushi, Paratha, Pumpkin Ravioli and more!

In the 2016-2017 school year we brought our classes to over 100 NYC school programs, including many within the Healthy Neighborhood Challenge zones. We plan to increase this number in the 2017-2018 school year with these target neighborhoods.

While Allergic to Salad will partner each site with one of our amazing trained educators we need equipment! With the help of this Challenge, ATS will outfit all sites in these neighborhoods that join into our cooking classes with our Culinary Equipment Kits through this campaign! PLUS, any of our school sites already in these neighborhoods will receive a Culinary Equipment Kit, allowing us to bring more affordable classes to these partners! 

While we raise funds for these classes, we'll partner with NYC restaurants to help boost our campaign. Each of these restaurant partnerships offer a unique and affordable (under $10) chef-led cooking class in partnership with one of our trained educators. Post-class, the dish the students cook will be featured on the restaurant's menu for up to one month. Proceeds from purchases of this dish will be donated, with the help of ioby, back to Allergic to Salad.

Neighborhoods include: Brooklyn: Brownsville - Bronx: Claremont/ Morrisania, Hunts Point, Mott Haven - Manhattan: LES, E. Harlem.

In this campaign, Allergic to Salad will partner with local restaurants to act as a base of our funding. With these restaurant partners we host affordable cooking classes ($8 registration) to youth in the community. The restaurant's chef leads a cooking class (in partnership with an ATS trained educator) and post-class the dish inspired by our students is featured on the menu! At the end of the restaurant's fundraising week, proceeds are donated to ATS (thru ioby)! We are lining up one restaurant every month to participate in this unique partnership! 

Allergic to Salad will also perform more "traditional" outreach for this campaign with targeted asks, personal calls/ emails, social media pushes, newsletter asks and more.

We will also work in conjunction with our educators to make this campaign a success asking them to reach out to their base of friends and family.

Since 2008 I have taught healthy cooking classes to NYC public school students at after-school programs, summer camps and more. With increasing demand for my healthy, vegetarian curriculum I formed Allergic to Salad in 2013. Today, in the 2016-2017 school year our healthy STEM-based cooking classes are in over 100 school sites and we have a team of over 25 enthusiastic and amazing educators. 

The language of food is universal. Many of our classes happen with non-native English speakers, title 1 schools and food deserts. Our vegetarian curriculum allows our students to engage in food in ways many of them traditionally don't, while we offer new combinations and tastes in a science-based curriculum.

Our classes address aspects of healthy eating, nutirtion, local food systems, food justice, food access and more. Classes provide basic kitchen safety, food handling, food prep and technique, including knife skills. Cooking is known to increase motor skills, math skills, build self-esteem, self-reliance, and more!