About
Our Story
Our story began in 2004 when Chef Lena and her friend Peggy Goldsmith collaborated with the County of San Diego to organize a holiday party (Annual Good Cheer Gift Giving) for foster youth and their siblings & friends. This event has continued annually, and in 2018 this was rolled into the nonprofit SD (San Diego) Foster Angels.
2020 was a transformative year for SD Foster Angels due to the ongoing pandemic. The annual in-person holiday party was canceled and efforts shifted to providing gifts and holiday celebratory meals for foster youth living in group homes throughout San Diego county. New collaborations were forged with a variety of agencies and organizations catering to residential facilities for foster youth in the far reaches of the county. With these new partnerships in place the work expanded to providing the unmet needs of the youth in periods outside the December holidays.
In 2021, SD Foster Angels assisted a newly opened group home for teenage girls – survivors of human trafficking, by offering self-defense, yoga and hands-on cooking classes. The girls’ feedback to Chef Lena was that they saw these cooking skills as a pathway to future livelihood, which gave Lena the impetus to create a culinary program dedicated to empowering underserved youth. The focus of the program has been to help these youths build self-confidence and self-sufficiency and a means to envision their future selves. This was to become the Chef Angels Culinary Program.
In 2022 Lena obtained a grant from the chef apparel company Chef Works, with which to embark on its pilot program with a group home of 6 teenage foster boys, 7 Chefs, and one Fishmonger, teaching classes bi-weekly.
2023 saw added programming piloted at a drop-in center for homeless youth run by Youth Assistance Coalition, who are heavily supported by the local MLB team San Diego Padres and their Foundation. By the end of the pilot year, in November 2023, a new nonprofit organization was born (now distinct from San Diego Foster Angels)- expanding on its mission and building out a Board of Directors composed of fellow Chefs and former Foster Youth.
In 2024, collaboration with the powerhouse nonprofit Promises2Kids came about, with a focus on creating custom programming supporting former foster youth. More partnerships and collaborations are in store moving forward.
Our Focus
Our mission is to work hands-on with unique groups of underserved youth in our community.
We actively seek out a distinct cohort of underserved youth in our community, drawing on their lived experience in the cocreation of best practices and methodologies, and helping to inform the direction and focus of the program. As the first organization of its kind, Chef Angels is a trailblazing program that not only provides teens and young adults with immediate, short-term support but also the tools and resources to develop long-term resilience and improved quality of life.
By focusing on a youth population that is oftentimes overlooked, we are recruiting from a rich pool of potential candidates to fulfill the pressing employment needs of the chef community, and the wider hospitality industry. Through our gift of culinary education, we aim to motivate the next generation of budding young chefs.
Chef Angels endeavors to garner enough funding to bring on full-time administrative staff to support our instructors; while our chefs themselves will continue to volunteer their time. Our short-term plans include expanding our programming to some of the (many) San Diego youth organizations on our waitlist and adding more chefs to our roster – all eager to give back to the community through the donation of their time and expertise. Mentorship is a key element of a successful career, and we have plans to create a program to bolster our recruitment efforts, guiding the youth through their journey of culinary education and employment. Over time we aim to copy our model into communities across other cities and states.
Case Studies
We collaborate with other nonprofit organizations that assist and provide services for youth from underserved communities. To remove any barriers stopping organizations from working with us, we work to cover the costs of classes through fundraising and grant submissions and approvals.
We identify organizations that would be a good fit for Chef Angels and create custom culinary programs unique to each organization’s needs. Some of the smaller programs benefit from a 100% hands-on cooking class approach. At the larger facilities, a combination of hands-on with a few youth volunteers, and the remainder of the youth watching in the audience, works well. Our tailored classes let us work with a large variety of organizations. In some cases, we offer field trip classes where we bring the youth to culinary businesses and organizations in San Diego for a tour, to learn about job opportunities or education enrollment, and of course, to cook. An important aspect of these types of classes is the education and opportunities the students are exposed to. Often we will have the chef instructor share their life story as a way to inspire the youth to consider culinary as a profession, or at the very least, start cooking for themselves.
Varsity Team
Varsity Team is a nonprofit with several small group homes for youth, and which specializes in behavioral therapy. Since November 2022 we have been teaching in the family home kitchen of a six-bed facility for boys aged 12 to 18 years, (mostly foster youth), using a hands-on approach, with the boys preparing the evening family dinner together.
Youth Assistance Coalition
Youth Assistance Coalition (YAC), is a drop-in center for homeless youth aged 12 to 24 years. As this facility has limited kitchen space we set up a demo table with some basic cooking equipment, focusing our classes on how to cook in constricted space with minimum equipment, mirroring their most likely housing set-up. We conduct the classes demo style, recruiting the youths to help us prep and cook.
Promises2Kids
Connecting with Chef Angels
At Chef Angels, we understand that every youth organization has unique needs. Our flexible class programs let us work with a large variety of organizations, allowing us to give them the instruction and support they need.
We are also seeking collaborators with culinary education campuses, hospitality businesses, culinary industry vendors, military culinary programs, local farms, and other such organizations to host a class.
Should your organization wish to participate, please reach out to us for more information.
Our Team
Our Board of Directors
Lena Goldberg, CMP
Violette Lewis
Sarah Colton
Jos Egleton
Rachel Macam, RD CDCES
Our Staff
Jess DeOcampo
Our Featured Chef Angels
Tommy "The Fishmonger" Gomes
Lety Gonzalez
Shelly Velez
Jess DeOcampo
Join the Team
Chef Angels is on a mission to ensure every youth in San Diego has access to food, education and community. We can’t do this by ourselves. Join us in our mission to bring good to our city and get involved with our team.
Our Sponsors
Services provided by:
Our Nonprofit Collaborators
Become a Part of the Change
Join us in our mission by donating, volunteering, or spreading the word.
Become a Part of the Change
Join us in our mission by donating, volunteering, or spreading the word.
