OUR MISSION
CulinaryCorps® designs, organizes and launches volunteer outreach experiences for culinary students and professionals to assist communities through food, cooking, education and exchange.
OUR VISION
Ultimately, CulinaryCorps aims to build a force of our nation’s most promising citizen-chefs, who are committed to setting the standard of social activism within the culinary field.
OUR PROGRAM
During each short-term trip, a small team of cooks, recruited from across the nation, are tasked with making a positive impact on a community through their passion for food and knowledge of their craft. At the same time, they are afforded the opportunity to learn about the unique culinary heritage of the area they serve, enriching and expanding their own palates with the help of the community members themselves.
Currently, our efforts are centered on the rebuilding efforts and culinary renaissance of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
OUR TRIP PARTNERSHIPS
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 well-being of a community.
OUR FOUNDING DIRECTOR
Christine Carroll founded CulinaryCorps® in 2006 with the aim of creating a world-class service organization for culinary professionals.
Christine conceived of CulinaryCorps following a Share Our Strength conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, which she attended as a Henckels Cutting Edge scholarship recipient. In New Orleans, she experienced first-hand one of America’s few indigenous cuisines, and she worked alongside those fighting to preserve it during the post-Katrina rebuilding.
Shortly after her return home to New York City, Christine launched CulinaryCorps to enable culinary students and professionals to volunteer their skills for the benefit of communities in need.
Prior to CulinaryCorps, Christine worked as an Americorps VISTA volunteer in Alaska, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, a cook in Europe, and a baker in New England. She has a degree in neuroscience from the College of William and Mary and a Grand Diploma in Culinary Arts from the French Culinary Institute.
OUR FISCAL SPONSOR
CulinaryCorps is based in Manhattan and is a non-profit pursuit under the fiscal sponsorship of FJC, a 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to create innovative and customized philanthropic solutions based in New York, New York.
