Chef Dawn Uses Her Skills and Passion to Introduce SCVi's Students to Healthy Foods They Like to Eat

Chef Dawn Walker has this advice to offer SCVi parent volunteers: “If you are doing what you love to do, volunteering is easy. Find your passion and see where it fits in.

If you are interested in photography, take yearbook pictures. If you love to garden, help with composting projects and our edible school yard. If you are a good writer, help write grants or work on the newsletter. If you are good at fixing cars, teach an auto repair class. There is room at our school for just about anything: find your passion and bring it to SCVi.” That’s something Dawn knows well. With daughters, Juliet in 1st grade, Macey in 3rd, and Arielle in 5th at SCVi, and a high school senior, Olivia, at West Ranch High School, she has been bringing her skills and passion as a professional chef to our school for two years now.

“I was a licensed health and life insurance agent out of college, then I became a notary public in 2000 and a certified residential real estate appraiser in 2008,” she says about her background. “When the real estate market fell, I decided to go back to what my real passion is: food and cooking. I became a chef in 2003.”

Five years later, with her daughters at SCVi, Dawn found herself dreaming with founder Amber Raskin about how to get students to embrace healthy eating. They thought about offering a snack bar with healthy snacks that kids liked that were also good for them–ones without high-fructose corn syrup or artificial flavors or sweeteners. That dream became a reality when the Snack Shack opened in September of 2008.

Last year, Dawn was at it again. This time, she dreamed of providing school lunches that were not only tasty and appealing to students and affordable to parents, but also organic. That dream led to SCVi’s lunch program, for which Royal Catering uses all organic meats and vegetables. “If they need to use something that’s not organic, they make sure that the products are as natural as possible, free from high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners,” explains Dawn. “Nothing is fried or breaded. We even offer a gluten-free and vegetarian menu to accommodate all of our students.”

Dawn is also proud to have helped start SCVi’s farmers market program, where a parent volunteer shows up at the end of Sunday’s farmers market at College of the Canyons to pick up fresh fruit and vegetables that the farmers were unable to sell. The produce is taken to another volunteer’s home, where it is washed. Then, it is put out in SCVi’s student center for students to snack on during the day. A group of volunteers also come together on Mondays to cook healthy soups from the produce. “Kids who admit to never eating their vegetables suddenly are eating soup made solely of vegetables!” she shares. “We can’t walk down the halls of school without students asking what our next soup will be.”

Dawn adds that it wouldn’t be possible without amazing parent volunteers. “I must thank the fabulous farmers market committee (teams A and B) for keeping this program going for almost a full year,” she says. “Between the Snack Shack, lunch program, and farmers market program, kids are eating new and healthier foods. I also started the Health and Wellness Committee, which is now in its second year. This group of parents helped to write the food policies at SCVi. They also collect donations for the food pantry, coordinate our Green Team, run our educational series for students and families, put out a wellness newsletter, and have even created and managed the community bulletin board. I am so proud of the three programs that I helped to create as SCVi. It makes volunteering so easy–doing what I really love to do.”

Still, Dawn won’t stop dreaming anytime soon. She now wants to see cooking and experimenting with food used in SCVi’s project-based learning. “I hope someday we will have a full kitchen that the kids can use for learning,” she says. “I hope to create an edible school yard and also raise enough money for the planting pockets that we could use in and outside of the building.”

Those interested in donating to this effort can contact Dawn at dawn@chefdawn.com.

“Knowing that I have made a difference in the eating habits of so many students makes me feel good,” she adds. “I have gotten so much personally by giving to SCVi.”

Play Interview with Chef Dawn from Feb, 3, 2010, KHTS AM-1220, “Today’s Woman.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Audio provided by KHTS AM-1220.)

Dawn’s Dinners got a brief mention on a recent KABC-TV news segment.

Watch the internet promo video for “Dawn’s Dinners.”

(Video by Noisivision Studios.)