With only a year of culinary school under their belts, three SOWELA Technical Community College students were thrust into the frontline of their aspiring careers, cooking thousands of meals each day for the survivors of Hurricane Laura, the most powerful storm to hit the Louisiana coast in more than a century and a half.
Working with Mercy Chefs, a faith-based, non-profit disaster relief organization that serves professionally cooked meals to disaster survivors, Lillian Peal, Sherman Broussard and Kiaeem Walker all suffered damage to their homes during the record shattering storm and lost their student externships at local restaurants. The three second-year SOWELA culinary students then were offered full-time jobs as chefs creating menus, devising recipes and volume cooking lunch and dinner for the thousands storm victims throughout Southwest Louisiana.