Celebrating 1,000 Culinary Job Training Graduates

On Friday, July 21, when the six students in Class 155 graduated, Second Helpings officially exceeded 1,000 graduates of our Culinary Job Training program since the organization’s founding in 1998.

You can watch Class 155’s graduation ceremony on YouTube or Facebook. This class of six students was sponsored by WRTV, and we were honored to have Jean Paison, one of Second Helpings’ founders, as our keynote speaker.

After the graduation ceremony, we hosted a reception to celebrate this milestone, which fortuitously fell during our 25^th anniversary. At the reception, we featured food from Foster’s Catering, who is a CJT employer, and also the winner of our Souper Bowls event earlier this year.

During this reception, Second Helpings also presented awards to the following champions of this program:

• Outstanding Employer to White Lodging (Indianapolis Marriott and JW Marriott)
• Outstanding Intern Champion to Circle City Sweets
• Outstanding Volunteer to Chef Jeff Bricker, Department Chair of the culinary program at Ivy Tech Community College
• Outstanding Graduate to Jeffery Hartfield, who graduated from Class 75 in 2014, and worked at Flatwater Restaurant for nine years before recently starting as operations manager of 317 BBQ.

This milestone is truly a community accomplishment, so it was a special day to celebrate with current and former Chef instructors, program graduates, employers, volunteers, sponsors, staff, and other community supporters.

Second Helpings is enrolling for future Culinary Job Training classes. Learn more about this free, seven-week program.