Culinary Scholarships Up For Grabs At High School Cooking Competition In Philadelphia
By Hadas Kuznits
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The final round of a highly competitive high school cooking competition took place Wednesday morning at The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College. The final results, which will be announced at the end of this month, will change the course of students' lives.
Keri Fisher, Program Director of the Careers through Culinary Arts Program, or C-CAP, says hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scholarships will be given out following the final round of this cooking competition.
"The participants are all high school students who are enrolled in culinary vocational programs," Fisher said, "and they have two hours to make a hunter's chicken with tourney potatoes and dessert crepes with pastry cream and chocolate sauce."
C-CAP founder Richard Grausman says for many students, this is their ticket out of poverty.
"Oh, definitely. We transform lives through this program. This gives them the opportunity to strive for something they never thought they could do before," he said. "There are students that come from no homes at all, parents are gone or are in jail and we become their family."
Student Sheika Duffus says the course of her future will be determined when the judges announce the final results on April 20th:
"If I don't have to put up a penny towards school, that's like, do you know how much money school costs? That means a lot," she said. "Especially because I don't have it and I don't want to take out student loans. So if I can't pay to go to college for my full tuition, then I'm going to go into military service."
Duffus' ultimate goal is to become an executive chef of her own restaurant.
Last year, the program gave out $700,000 in scholarships.
