Christine Carroll  
Founding Director, CulinaryCorps

As one of twenty 2006 Henckels Cutting Edge scholarship winners attending October's Share Our Strength conference in New Orleans, Christine experienced one of America's few indigenous cuisines and worked alongside those fighting to preserve it during this time of rebuilding. She also had the pleasure of experiencing the city with an amazing group of culinary students who understood that, when combined, food and community service can make a profound impact.

Upon her return to New York City, she immediately began to brainstorm about returning to NOLA with culinary students and professionals in tow to both volunteer their kitchen skills and consume large quantities of beignets, po' boys and pralines. After some preliminary research, it became clear that although organized volunteer opportunities in NOLA were plentiful, few specifically courted the expertise of culinary professionals. With the help of Share Our Strength, CulinaryCorps was created from that void.

Christine graduated in 2000 with a degree in biological psychology from The College of William and Mary, taking a hiatus during her junior year to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Anchorage, Alaska. Relocating to Cambridge, England in 2003, Christine took a once-a-week French cooking class at a local community college to pass the time while job hunting. Fortunately, her culinary instructor nabbed her before any office job could and she has been a professional cook ever since. Christine completed her Grand Diploma in Culinary Arts at the French Culinary Institute in January of 2007.

CULINARYCORPS OVERVIEW

CulinaryCorps is a non-profit organization that designs, organizes and launches week-long culinary outreach experiences for culinary students and professionals.

Combining food-centered volunteer projects with culinary educational activities, CulinaryCorps provides team members with an opportunity to transform their kitchen skills and passion for food into community outreach tools.

CulinaryCorps partners with food-related organizations and businesses embedded within a community, lending manpower to their goals and objectives while working within the framework of the community's own culinary heritage. Each itinerary combines a broad range of service project partners, from farmers markets to school gardens, crisis kitchens to professional restaurants, intended to expose Corps members to the varied, vital and oftentimes complex role food plays in the wellbeing of a community.

At its core, each CulinaryCorps experience is launched to provide necessary support and solidarity to the community served. But beyond the service objectives, it is hoped that each CulinaryCorps volunteer departs with a unique connection to the community and a profound realization of their leadership potential outside of the kitchen.

Like its Jazz, New Orleans proudly claims ownership to one of the few truly native cuisines in the nation. From the infusion of hearty Cajun country fare over the recent decades to the historic injections of Spanish, Caribbean, African, French and Creole cuisines over centuries, New Orleans food, along with its music and architecture, rightfully sits among its most cherished cultural possessions. As the rebuilding delays mount and aid enthusiasm wanes, the cuisine that has come to define the city needs to be shared more now than ever.

By volunteering to fill the residual kitchen manpower gaps and simultaneously submersing itself in the food heritage of the city, CulinaryCorps aims to battle these deficits by mobilizing those with the capacity and skill set to help. Beyond the kitchen hours pledged to the city, CulinaryCorps members are also dedicated to providing those anchoring the community with a necessary dose of support and solidarity in a time when fatigue is prevalent. Ultimately, it is our hope that each trip empowers Corps members to continue to create lasting community change utilizing their culinary strengths, whether in New Orleans or their own backyard.

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