Cookie Cart - Minneapolis, MN, USA

The Cookie Cart, in north Minneapolis, is the Twin Cities' seventh and newest Kids Cafe location. An initiative of America's Second Harvest and ConAgra foods, Kids Cafe is a free meal service programme that provides nutritious food to hungry children in safe and nurturing environments. More than 1,200 Kids Cafes have been established in cities in 41 states across the country.

The new Kids Cafe is located at the Cookie Cart Learning Center, an organisation that teaches at-risk youth business and leadership skills through its commercial bakery operation. Participants are taught marketable skills such as accountability, courtesy, and teamwork, along with kitchen safety and food handling. Students who show leadership ability can also train to become student managers. The Cookie Cart employs students ages 14 to 17 to bake and sell cookies, manage the on-site café (which serves full meals), and provide general administrative support. Organisers hope the students, who are mostly Hmong and black, will share recipes from home.

When the students aren't on official baking duty, they often come to the Center to do homework, get a free after-school snack, and then cook a meal together along with family members or friends. The Cookie Cart's programme director and staff dietician Karen Blanchard takes that opportunity to teach students about meal planning, shopping, nutrition, and cooking. In doing so, she works to shift their definition of good food away from deep-fried snacks, and encourages them to explore different kinds of foods. She also hopes in the future to teach the kids to cook using whole foods and a minimum of preprocessed ingredients.

"For more than 15 years, the Cookie Cart Learning Center has taught teens entrepreneurial skills; now, as the new home of a Kids Cafe, it is also teaching them the 'business of caring,'" says the Cookie Cart's executive director John Tarrant. "What differentiates this Kids Cafe from others in the Twin Cities and even across the country is that here, neighborhood kids are helping to feed other neighborhood kids. The Cafe provides snacks daily to approximately 40 local youth as well as hot dinners every Friday night. Organisers say these meals are vital because hungry children do not have access to school meals over the weekend.

Visitors to the Cookie Cart site may purchase cookies online.

Nutrition, Economic Development, Youth.

Organisers say that hunger affects more Minneapolitan families and children than the US average. 43% of the people served by Second Harvest Heartland are children, compared to 39% of the people served nationally by America's Second Harvest food banks. In the neighbourhood where the Cookie Cart is located, 65% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. The fastest-growing group of hungry people in Minneapolis is low-wage working families. 46% of families served by Second Harvest Heartland have reported having to choose between paying for food and paying their rent or mortgage bill, versus 36% of America's Second Harvest clients nationally.

The Cookie Cart Learning Center originated in 1988 through the work of Sister Jean Theurauf. Her efforts to provide a safe place for at-risk youth have evolved into a nondenominational, nonprofit organisation. The Cookie Cart takes an active role in the West Broadway neighborhood, partnering with local businesses, civic organisations, and faith communities to nurture and safeguard neighborhood youth. In 2001, the Cookie Cart Learning Center served over 200 children and youth ages 6-17.