COOK-EAT-LEARN SESSIONS (CELS)

Learning Life’s cook-eat-learn sessions or CELS bring together families and volunteers in metro Washington DC to learn about food, nutrition and the world.  CELS meals occur at the home of a family interested in learning, or interested in sharing what they know about foreign cooking and eating.

CELS with a Chinese familyFor families interested in learning, Learning Life volunteers come, usually in pairs, to the family’s home with the ingredients and tools to make a cheap, tasty, easy, healthy, foreign meal.  They prepare and eat the meal with the family, and engage the family in fun, interactive learning about foreign people and foods.

For families interested in sharing what they know about foreign cooking and eating. they invite either a Learning Life lower-income DC family and/or a mentor-mentee pair to their home to cook, eat and learn about each other, and a foreign people and their cuisine.  (More about Learning Life’s mentoring program here.)

“In an area as segregated by race, ethnicity and class as metro Washington DC is, Learning Life’s CELS are intended to help bridge those divides and help open the CELS meal prep at the home of a DC familyworld to less fortunate families and children,” explains Learning Life’s founder and director, Paul Lachelier.  “Food is a great way to bring families and volunteers together across divides, and to nurture the curiosity and caring necessary for a more tolerant, peaceful world.”

Families and volunteers interested in learning more about or participating in Learning Life CELS should contact us at email@learninglife.info.  Volunteers and families interested in sharing their knowledge about a foreign people and their cuisine must be willing to furnish free of charge the ingredients and any cooking tools necessary to make the meal possible.