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The Mocha Celis Civil Association launched a Sustainable Cooking School . This was done through the global initiative Like a Chef, which is making its debut in Argentina. For the first time, this project is aimed at the trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary (TTNB) community.

“This course is very important because through knowledge one can work or start their own business, which is essential nowadays,” Evelyn “Tuti” Ojeda, 56, shared with Presentes. Tuti is a graduate of the Mocha Celis school. For as long as she can remember, she has loved to cook, especially the dishes of her native Paraguay, from which she emigrated 34 years ago: vorí vorí, sopa paraguaya, and gnocchi. Now she will be part of the group of students in the course that begins next Friday.

Like a Chef is a job training program created by the Electrolux Food Foundation in 2016. It began in Brazil and then expanded to other countries and Europe. To date, more than 1,300 people worldwide have graduated from this initiative.

This year marks the first time the event is being held in Argentina, in collaboration with Mocha Celis and the Carrefour . It is also the first time the initiative is targeting the transgender community.

“Training and educating new professionals helps us transform the world we want to live in. This idea is based on ensuring everyone has the same opportunities. In this sense, private firms are starting to get involved with our work. It’s extremely important,” Virginia Silveira, president of the Mocha Celis Civil Association, told Presentes.

Cooking projects

This course is part of the Mocha Celis vocational training program, whose objective is "to prepare students for formal employment while also supporting their academic paths and university admissions," explained Florencia Scolaro, the program coordinator. It will consist of four phases. The first phase involved incorporating the training into the high school curriculum in the second year. Following this, at least three courses will be offered, each lasting a month and a half, meeting three times a week for four hours. Two of these courses begin this Friday, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Another course will begin in October, and registration is now open .

During the course, professional chefs with a gender perspective will teach classes. These classes will develop basic savory and sweet cooking skills, focusing on "zero food waste in a sustainable kitchen." Volunteers from Electrolux and Carrefour will also participate, providing entrepreneurship classes on marketing, human resources, finance, and cost management.

The decision to promote this program in La Mocha arose from observing an increase in school dropout rates related to the inability of students to continue paying for transportation and ensuring more than one meal a day.

“It’s a meeting place, a refuge, a space to brainstorm projects. The idea behind setting up this kitchen went far beyond simply offering these courses. Cooking has always been very important to La Mocha. Our idea here is also to start developing projects that can create a network, a framework, starting from the kitchen to improve the quality of life for the community,” said Francisco Quiñones, secretary and co-founder of the civil association.

In this regard, the Mocha community intends to establish a school cafeteria for the wider TTNB community and to hold more frequent community kitchens. They need food donations for this.

Comprehensive approach

In just one month, the room that now houses the community kitchen was completely transformed. It went from being a space filled with furniture used as an archive and storage area to a remodeled one with five electric ovens, two freezers, five cooktops, two refrigerators, five water purifiers, blenders, mixers, juicers, and utensils donated by Electrolux.

“This is related to the comprehensive approach that La Mocha takes. Although it started with a high school diploma in education, with all the problems that arose, we tried to address different issues related to health, employability, access to justice, and food sovereignty. This led to the establishment of a kitchen. Hot water was installed, which we didn't have before, and two movable stainless steel tables were added,” Lautaro González, La Mocha's Institutional Relations Coordinator, who was in charge of the architecture of the new space, explained to this agency.

“Most of my colleagues don’t have a kitchen at home. We work with a large hotel population, so they often live in overcrowded conditions and don’t have a proper space to cook or anything. Having a shared kitchen is fantastic, especially considering how expensive food is. Thinking of food as a meeting place also helps reduce dropout rates,” he added.

Make the most of everything

The Like a Chef program focuses on sustainable food. “We have our appliances in our customers’ kitchens, and we found it was a good way to connect with them and propose a change. One of the most effective ways to combat global warming is to fight food waste,” said Ikal Luzón, program coordinator and head of Diversity and Inclusion at Electrolux.

For its part, Carrefour Argentina's contact with Mocha Celis began in 2022. At that time, the company's foundation was celebrating its 20th anniversary, and they launched a donation of kitchen equipment to soup kitchens and community centers throughout the country. "This is about building capacity, helping not from an assistance-based perspective, but by empowering talent," shared Yamila Scollo, Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Carrefour Argentina, who is in charge of Diversity co-governance. 

“We aim to create new generations of chefs who already possess this sustainable perspective on food. This involves not only focusing on production, but also on where we source our food, who our suppliers are, and the conditions under which we produce it,” Iuzón concluded.