Courtesy Wild Horse Elementary School
Courtesy Soulcial Kitchen
A Fine Swine BBQ, one of Soulcial Kitchen's food trucks
Throughout May, food trucks from Soulcial Kitchen will deploy across the St. Louis region to provide 562 free, hot meals to people without housing and health care workers. The initiative is in part thanks to Wild Horse Elementary’s recent service-learning project, in which students raised funds to fight food insecurity in their communities.
Debbie Fox and Andrea Wylie, Co-Facilitators for Character Education at Wild Horse, heard about the good work Soulcial Kitchen was doing to combat food insecurity with its Currency of Caring program and brought the organization’s mission to the students. The kids were immediately on board.
Courtesy Wild Horse Elementary School
Students earning money
Through various jobs and chores, from mowing lawns to selling lemonade, the students raised nearly $4,500 for Soulcial Kitchen to deploy food trucks six times in May.
“I feel great about helping someone who really needs it,” says Ryan, a student at Wild Horse Elementary. “It’s like the Golden Rule—treat others like you would want to be treated.”
Jazz said, “It felt really good knowing that we are helping people get meals when they normally can’t.”
Varsha added, "I feel responsible because I helped kids understand what food insecurity is and what we can do to help people who don’t get food very often.”
Based in Shiloh, Illinois, Soulcial Kitchen launched in 2021 and is the brainchild of Brigadier General (Ret.) John E. Michel. The business model encompasses food trucks, a cloud kitchen, a business incubator, and pay-it-forward meal tokens. The company set up a home base and food truck park last July.
Courtesy Wild Horse Elementary School
Brigadier General (Ret.) John E. Michel explains the Soulcial Kitchen concept to students at Wild Horse Elementary School
Courtesy Wild Horse Elementary School
Student earning money
On May 7, two trucks will serve meals at inExcelsis, a St. Louis-based organization that exists “to retrieve the dignity of homeless people and displaced young people.” Another two trucks will be dispatched to St. Luke’s Hospital to feed the doctors, nurses, custodians, and others who've provided care and assistance during the pandemic. Later in the month, two more trucks will park at Wild Horse Elementary for a community-wide celebration to raise more funds.
“We didn’t want to just collect cans, and we didn’t want the kids to just ask their parents for money,” says Fox. “We had two main objectives with this project: Each grade had to learn about food insecurity on a level that was age-appropriate, and the kids had to do odd jobs to raise the funds needed to purchase Soulcial Kitchen ‘Currency of Caring’ coins. I think they really enjoyed that homework assignment.”
