INDIANAPOLIS — Students in one Indianapolis charter school now can have healthy meals every day. On Wednesday,Circle City Prep unveiled its brand-new student cafe.
“Two years in the making, we’ve been fighting this financially structurally organizationally to make this reality for our kids, because we believed in what it was going do for them,” Founder and Head of Circle City Prep, Megan Murphy said.
The cafe which is also called C3, is a dream come true for leaders at the charter school. For more than a year, school leaders worked to change a gym to a full-on cafeteria that includes a food lab where students get the chance to create healthy meals and a scratch kitchen for the schools culinary team.
“If you know that you’ve been here for a long time, you’ve seen everything happen and for the first time you and they’re doing a ribbon-cutting you’re there you’re holding the ribbon it makes you feel even more special than you already are,” Jonnah Davidson a 6th grader at Circle City Prep said.
Circle City Prep is a tuition-free charter school on the Far-Eastside of Indianapolis. The school partners with the Patachou Foundation that allows for an on-site chef to cook the students breakfast and lunch. At CCP, 93% of the students qualify for free or reduced meals and 87% are students of color. Most are at constant risk for food insecurity.
“It means a lot and this is a change and it shows all that they are giving,” 7th grader Demarion Stewart said. School leaders say it’s in a constant battle to fight food insecurity, adding that the school is located in a federally mandated food desert. That’s why they brought in chefs from the Patachou Foundation. It’s story that WRTV first highlighted earlier this year.
“I appreciate the people who helped donate for it and help make it, it shows that they care,” 7th grader Marquis Sims added.
With help from the Patachou Foundation, circle city prep has served more than 1,000 scratch meals.
