attacking root causes

Since 2013, The Patachou Foundation has led the fight against childhood hunger in Indianapolis by serving over 400,000 nutritious after-school and school break meals. Meeting the immediate food and nutrition needs of kids in our community will always be the foundation of our work – but it is not enough to make our work obsolete. That’s why The Patachou Foundation has taken an innovative, sustainable approach to hunger relief that addresses root causes of food insecurity, such as poverty and other systemic barriers. 

In 2020, the Foundation launched the Food Fellowship, a six-week workforce development program for high school students that helps them leverage the power of food as a tool for economic mobility and self-sufficiency. Food Fellows receive hands-on training from industry professionals at the Patachou Foundation’s urban farm and production kitchen, Foundation Coffee Company, Cafe Patachou and Petite Chou. Each of these experiences equips them with skills which can immediately be used in careers across the food industry – including culinary, customer service, urban farming, barista skills, entrepreneurship, and ServSafe certification. In 2022, the Food Fellowship added a student-run neighborhood farm stand where Fellows sell produce from the Patachou Foundation urban farm each Thursday during the six-week program. 

The Patachou Foundation’s newest initiative, PataSchool, turns the hunger relief model on its head by embedding food and nutrition security into a school cafeteria. Indianapolis students depend on school food for their daily calories but many schools are not equipped for nutritious, from-scratch cooking. Through the PataSchool model, the Patachou Foundation is helping community schools serve better food so students can learn and thrive throughout the school day. 

Through innovative approaches like the Food Fellowship and PataSchool, The Patachou Foundation is upending traditional hunger relief nonprofit paradigms to make a deep and immediate impact on hunger in Indianapolis.