Coming Together through Cooking with PS Global Experiences

February 23, 2021

Footage from our PS Cooking Class with Chef Raphael in Kenya,

Travel has been, particularly in recent years, a large component of Project Success programming. Our global experiences have involved taking from 10 to as many as 50 students to locations around the world — Washington D.C., London, Paris and Mexico, to name a few. But in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the way every global citizen approaches travel.

Travel is a reflection of many PS values, instilling hope and exposing students to the power of possibilities. We know that connecting students to new parts of the world is still important — it has become perhaps more important than ever over the past year. But in many ways, a virtual setting actually removed some of the constraints of global travel. Previous limitations like time, budget, space, and capacity become more flexible when experiencing things digitally.

This gave our team the chance to dream up new types of experiences for students. We’ve hosted live safaris in South Africa, city tours of Prague, and connected 200 students to pen pals across the globe. Later this month, we’re even headed to Antarctica through our Outdoor Adventures program — you can’t get much more remote than that!

Each country has afforded its own unique opportunities to explore new cultures. Building off the huge popularity of our Institute cooking course — which, in distance learning, has included home delivery of the weekly recipe’s ingredients to students — global cooking was a natural fit and next step for PS.

Global Experiences Associate Anne Skold said, “No matter what, food is going to be one of the huge parts of experiencing another country or culture. Plus, food brings people together.”

Chef Raphael on his cooking livestream with PS students.

Our first PS foray into cooking as a virtual global experience was with Kenya’s Chef Raphael Ndaiga. Chef Raphael is a native of Kenya, and “envisions a Kenya whereby food is accorded the appreciation it deserves,” according to his website, and “understands the importance of family bonding experience on the dinner table while enjoying great home meals.”

“I found him and saw he had a following, and lots of experience working with young people,” said Anne of Chef Raphael (he definitely has a following — check out this CNN feature about him). “He was a perfect fit!”

In a private event tailored specifically to Project Success students, Chef Raphael walked students through cooking traditional dishes Ugali, Sukuma Wiki, and Githeri. To give access to as many students as possible who wanted to participate, all ingredients were sourced and provided to students by Project Success free of cost, and all dishes were vegetarian.

Chef Raphael live streamed from his kitchen, thousands of miles away in Nairobi, and broadcast directly to students’ homes here in Minneapolis — a whole new kind of global experience. While the class was a great opportunity to connect students with culture and cuisine thousands of miles across the globe, they forged connections at home as well. “My favorite thing to see was that when students turned their computer screens on to show what they were cooking, you realized it wasn’t just them cooking by themselves,” said Anne. “It was dads cooking with daughters, siblings cooking together, it was a great family activity. The whole family gets to come along for the ‘trip.’”

The success of the Kenyan cooking class has spurred PS to delve further into global cooking, hosting additional classes in the Czech Republic later in February, and Colombia in March. Each time, PS will provide ingredients and instruction free of cost to our students. If you’re a PS student or parent/guaridan, check out our upcoming Global Experiences or watch the recording of our live class with Chef Raphael.