Cooking up comfort, confidence and community

Cooking up comfort, confidence and community

By Elizabeth Limbach
Photography by Patrice Ward

When Angela Farley’s son Charlie began recovering from the lung cancer he contracted at the astonishingly young age of four, she didn’t expect to stay long in “the cancer world.”

Yet, four years later, here she is still at the helm of a growing nonprofit organization of her own creation that provides nourishing meals to local families shattered by life-threatening illness. The organization, Teen Kitchen Project, has been voted Best Nonprofit of 2015 by Edible Monterey Bay’s readers.

“I was consumed with managing my PTSD by organizing food delivery for people who were sick,” she says of the period that followed her son’s upturn. “The work chose me.”

Inspired and trained by Ceres Community Project in Sebastopol, Farley’s meal delivery effort became Teen Kitchen Project in the fall of 2012. With the help of head chef Stephanie Forbes and an army of volunteer teen cooks, dishwashers, chefs, drivers and local farms, the Soquel- based group has in fewer than three years logged 2,400 volunteer hours and delivered more than 24,200 free meals to families coping with grave illness. Today, it involves 125 teens and delivers seven seasonal, mostly organic meals to 40 families each week.

As is often the case with acts of kindness, the project’s teen cooks have been graced with their own rewards. In particular, they’ve learned their way around a commercial kitchen—gaining skills with knives, safe food handling and industrial ovens. They’ve also acquired universally applicable life experience in collaboration, leadership, healthy cooking and eating, and playing positive roles in their communities.

“Most people have known somebody who’s been ill with a lifethreatening illness or have been in the situation themselves with their family,” Farley says, reflecting on the program’s impact. “But everyone has also been a teenager and for a lot of people that time was hard—it was a time when they were trying to figure out where they fit in the community.

“The teens in our program get a really clear sense of their importance,” she adds. “It helps them connect with their community in a meaningful way.”

In 2015, Teen Kitchen Project aims to expand its reach by 50% and, to that end, Farley is taking a sabbatical from her teaching job to work as Teen Kitchen Project’s full-time executive director.

The organization has added new chefs, increased its time in the kitchen and, with new Spanish-language materials, plans to step up its outreach to Spanish speakers. The group also aims to launch cooking classes for all of the people it serves the families of the ill and those of its teen volunteer force alike.

“I’m constantly amazed at how this project is continually supported by everyone,” Farley says. “The organization isn’t me, it’s not the chef, it’s not just the teens or the volunteers, it’s the whole community working together.”

Perhaps best of all for Farley, the community rallying around her also includes little Charlie, the catalyst for her original inspiration. He’s now a thriving 7-year-old who helps carry 25-pound bags of carrots from the car to Teen Kitchen Project’s walk-in refrigerator—and occasionally even cooks her breakfast in bed.