Partner Spotlight : STAR Program

STAR Program participants learn how to cook in the Cooking for the Crowd kitchen!

The Notre Dame School of Dallas’ STAR Adult Program empowers adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to build fulfilling, independent lives beyond the classroom. Recently expanded to a larger space at East Dallas Christian Church, the program offers continuing education, job training, and life skills development for adults 22 and older. With capacity to serve up to 80 participants across North Texas, STAR fosters growth, community, and inclusion, helping graduates gain confidence, contribute to the workforce, and live with greater independence and purpose.

The STAR program is literally a neighbor to Cooking for the Crowd and a lovely partnership is starting to bloom. The kitchen will provide these program participants with valuable life skills such as chopping, cleaning dishes, cooking and navigating a team environment while also serving others. It's a heartwarming relationship that we hope fosters goodwill for years to come.

Here's the start of a really cool collaboration, natural and easy with partners already in the building. It's a joy to create something new for the world while also doing the right thing and respecting all of those in the spectrum of humanity. Cooking for the Crowd was founded with the simple premise: Love, respect and dignity are foundational to human potential and the fact that small non-profit organizations inefficiently spend much of their time and resources feeding the people they serve, regardless of their actual mission. This essay shares Cooking for the Crowd's mission: to take cooking off an organization's plate so they can focus on their mission!

May it be so!