GOOD

This Celebrity Chef Wants To Help Low-Income Students In Chicago Break Into The Culinary Industry

“I believe our city is rich with untapped resources.”

 Britni Danielle
10.25.17

Rick Bayless, once the Obamas' chef, has all the trappings of a celebrity chef: four star restaurants, best-selling cookbooks, a line of salsas in stores, and a chain of casual eateries at airports across America. Now that he's reached the top of his field, the James Beard Award winner is finding ways to help aspiring future restaurateurs in his adopted home of Chicago.

Bayless has several award-winning restaurants in the Windy City, so it’s only fitting that he’s starting a culinary training program for Chicago’s low-income students. The program will not only teach high school and college students necessary kitchen skills, like knife work, cooking techniques, and how to identify and work with ingredients, but it will also place them into internships at some of the finest food establishments in the city. According to Bayless, the program — which will cost students a “nominal fee” — will benefit both students and restaurant owners alike.

“I believe this program can help surmount two big challenges in the city — lack of cooks to fill our restaurants’ kitchens and a lack of both solid preparation and career opportunities for the youth of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods,” Bayless said in a press release announcing the program. “There’s a reason I think this program can make a difference: I can say that some of the most valuable people in our kitchens are ones that we’ve brought up from the most entry-level jobs, taught basic skills and self-respect, and seen flourish.”

The culinary classes will take place at The Hatchery, a groundbreaking new food co-op located in Chicago, and are expected to begin in fall 2018. Bayless has already gotten buy-in for the program from many of the city’s top chefs, including Paul Kahan, Grant Achatz, Stephanie Izard, Matthias Merges, Cosmo Goss, Erick Williams, Josh Kulp and Christine Cikowski, Genie Kwon, and more.

While it’s only in the incubation phase, Bayless’ new culinary training program may put a small dent in the youth unemployment crisis in Chicago, where up to 70% of young people do not have a job. Though many invoke the Windy City’s challenges to score political points, Bayless believes Chicago is full of promise.

“I believe our city is rich with untapped resources,” he said. “If we can develop a way to cultivate them, both our restaurants and our community will be the better for it.”

Education

Youth activists gather to fight climate change at UN Summit: 'We need to transform anger into action'

Julian Meehan

Young leaders from around the world are gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York Saturday to address arguably the most urgent issue of our time. The Youth Climate Summit comes on the heels of an international strike spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, who arrived in New York via emissions-free sailboat earlier this month.

Translated from Swedish, "berg" means "mountain," so it may feel fated that a young woman with Viking blood in her veins and summit in her name would be at the helm. But let's go out on a limb and presume Thunberg, in keeping with most activists, would chafe at the notion of pre-ordained "destiny," and rightly so. Destiny is passive — it happens to you. It's also egomaniacal. Change, on the other hand, is active; you have to fight. And it is humble. "We need to get angry and understand what is at stake," Thunberg declared. "And then we need to transform that anger into action."

This new generation of activists' most pernicious enemy is denial. The people in charge — complacent politicians and corporation heads who grossly benefit from maintaining the status quo — are buffered from real-life consequences of climate change. But millions of people don't share that privilege. For them, climate change isn't an abstract concept, but a daily state of emergency, whether it comes in the form of "prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa…devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific…[or] heatwaves and wildfires," as Amnesty International reportsare all too real problems people are facing on a regular basis.

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Millions of people in over 150 countries across the globe marched for lawmakers and corporations to take action to help stop climate change on Friday, September 20.

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"We need to act right now to stop burning fossil fuels and ensure a rapid energy revolution with equity, reparations and climate justice at its heart," organizers say.

There's no doubt the visual images from the marches send a powerful message to those on the ground but especially those watching from around the world. GOOD's own Gabriel Reilich was on the scene for the largest of the Climate Strikes. Here are 18 of the best signs from the Climate Strike march in New York City.

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September 20th marks the beginning of a pivotal push for the future of our planet. The Global Climate Strike will set the stage for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, where more than 60 nations are expected to build upon their commitment to 2015's Paris Agreement for combating climate change.

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Major US phone carriers have yet to build out the infrastructure necessary to provide a consistent 5G experience, so Apple didn't feel it necessary to integrate the technology into its latest iPhone.

A dramatic new feature on the iPhone 11 Pro is its three camera lenses. The three lenses give users the the original wide, plus ultrawide and telephoto options.

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Woman dreams she swallowed her engagement ring and wakes up with it missing

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via I love butter / Flickr

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People often dream about their significant others and studies show it actually affects how we behave towads them the next day.

"A lot of people don't pay attention to their dreams and are unaware of the impact they have on their state of mind," said Dylan Selterman, psychology lecturer at the University of Maryland, says according to The Huffington Post. "Now we have evidence that there is this association."

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