Making a Deeper Impact

If you haven’t heard of PataSchool, The Patachou Foundation’s newest hunger-fighting initiative, this update is for you. PataSchool leverages our 10 years of experience and culinary professionalism to activate school cafeterias to fight hunger, create positive, measurable outcomes, and place hunger solutions into communities. First, let’s create some context around the importance and current reality of school food in Indianapolis.

Kids rely on school meals. School meals account for 15% of hunger relief in Indiana (2020 Indy Hunger Network), which makes them a fantastic vehicle to create the most significant impact. Currently, most school cafeterias in our community are only equipped to heat and serve prepackaged food. One of PataSchool’s primary functions is to restore working kitchens in school cafeterias to ensure all students have daily access to nutritious scratch-made meals - like the ones we’ve been providing for a decade.

In our first school partner school, Circle City Prep, we worked with school leadership, staff, students, parents, and guardians to assess the barriers and needs of their school community. This process resulted in a wellness framework that empowers community stakeholders with a tool to share their input on all wellness initiatives within the school, including the food being served. During their kitchen renovation (transformation pictured above), we helped them ensure they had the right equipment. We are currently assisting in training their staff and created 3.5 new jobs in the process.

Here’s what our first partnership with Circle City Prep looks like when you look at the numbers: