Aubrey Hinton, a cooking teacher and garden coordinator at Pomeroy Elementary in Santa Clara, California, makes strawberry almond milk smoothies in class. (Photo credit: Ana Homonnay, courtesy of The Charlie Cart Project)
The Charlie Cart Project sells fully stocked mobile kitchens and a curriculum to go with them, as well as ongoing training and support to teachers. Federal funding cuts don’t directly impact the Charlie Cart Project because the nonprofit doesn’t apply for those grants.
Roughly half of its funding comes from cart sales; foundations, individual donors, and corporate sponsors provide the rest. But the federal cuts may hurt some districts’ ability to buy Charlie Carts. In recent weeks, the organization has heard from four separate people that they won’t be able to purchase Charlie Carts this fall due to funding cuts, according to founder Carolyn Federman.
“It seems so silly, but I was like, if we can’t bring the kids to the kitchen, let’s bring the kitchen to the kids.”
Federman launched the Charlie Cart Project in 2016, after working as director of Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard Project, in Berkeley. She also taught basic culinary education at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, the project’s main location, where her children attended school. She always had to lug food, knives, cutting boards, and other cooking equipment to class, which gave her the idea for the mobile kitchens.
“It seems so silly, but I was like, ‘If we can’t bring the kids to the kitchen, let’s bring the kitchen to the kids,’” she says.
She designed a cart that could be an all-in-one kitchen, complete with the basic appliances needed to lead a cooking lesson: a small induction cooktop, a griddle, a toaster oven, a Vitamix blender, and a gray-water rinse station. A teacher—or librarian, food educator, or parent volunteer—could roll the cart into a room and plug it in. She named it Charlie Cart, after the 1860s Chuck Wagon.
Charlie Carts cost $14,000 with shipping and include access to a K-5 curriculum with 54 lessons that can be adapted for older kids or adults. The seasonal recipes align with Common Core educational standards. Today, there are 625 Charlie Carts at schools, libraries, food banks, and even Veterans Affairs sites in 47 states.
In Charleston, South Carolina, the Lowcountry Food Bank partnered with the local library system to buy five Charlie Carts for area libraries. Dana Mitchel, director of community health and nutrition at the food bank, says SNAP-Ed funding paid for the initial training for librarians. SNAP-Ed is essentially a national obesity intervention program, designed to prevent food-related illnesses like diabetes and heart disease by encouraging healthy eating habits.
“Just seeing kids and families feel more confident working with food is really very exciting,” says Mitchel. “The stories we get are, ‘I didn’t know I could have my child work so safely and productively in the kitchen. I’m excited to be with them in the kitchen now.’”
Federman saw a big uptick in libraries buying Charlie Carts during the pandemic. “Libraries have way more flexibility than schools and can stand up programs super fast,” she says.
Pilot Light Executive Director Alexandria DeSorbo-Quinn serves yogurt parfaits to Chicago-area preschoolers. (Photo credit: Therese Pudela, courtesy of Pilot Light)
Chicago-based Pilot Light was loosely formed in 2010 by four celebrity chefs who were inspired to teach culinary education in public schools after one of them attended First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Chefs Move! to Schools” events.
Pilot Light won’t be affected by SNAP-Ed’s elimination. The organization was already wrapping up a USDA Farm to School grant before funding for that program was cancelled, and the bulk of its revenue comes from fundraising galas, corporate sponsorships, foundations, donations, and professional curriculum development for school districts.
Like the Charlie Cart Project, Pilot Light recruits and supports teachers who are already employed by school districts and who want to incorporate food education into their lesson plans. Each year, they offer fellowships to 25 teachers, who receive one-on-one coaching and professional development from Pilot Light staff and learn from experts in food education, health, and agriculture. The teachers also get a $2,000 stipend and some funding for supplies and chef visits.
Pilot Light was already wrapping up a USDA Farm to School grant before funding for that program was cancelled, and the bulk of its revenue comes from fundraising galas, corporate sponsorships, foundations, donations, and professional curriculum development for school districts.
Pilot Light created its own food education standards with a panel of experts in 2018, with eight focus areas, including the environment and health. The standards were updated in July to reflect teacher feedback and real classroom experiences. They are broad enough that teachers can tailor the standards to their subject area and student body.
“You can teach any subject through food,” says Executive Director Alexandria DeSorbo-Quinn. “I’ve seen students write poems about a dish that’s been passed down in their family for generations. Suddenly, they’re not just learning about metaphor or structure; they’re connecting language to their identity and their history, all through food. That’s when their eyes light up.”
The Pilot Light curriculum requires students to complete a food advocacy project. In recent years, students in a sixth grade science class in Chicago submitted a city ordinance to ban plastic foam at Chicago restaurants, even holding a press conference at City Hall.
Many teachers go on to serve as mentors to new Pilot Light fellows or present at conferences.
“We invest heavily in that first year, and they keep impacting their students year over year,” DeSorbo-Quinn says. “They become our greatest champions and ambassadors.”
