Charity dinner in La Rochelle catering school, publié le 15/04/2023

On 24 March 2023, the pupils from the final year of BTEC European section organized a charity dinner in favour of Sala Baï.
Sala Baï is a Cambodian hotel and catering school launched 20 years ago by “Agir pour le Cambodge” in order to bring young people out of extreme poverty by training them so as to help them get jobs in the catering industry. Sala Baï is located in Siem Reap near the Angkor temples.
It took a few months to organize the evening. The project started with 3 teachers (Mrs Brunet, an English teacher, M Soulaine, a service teacher and M Trouiller, a cooking teacher), the European class and 2 restaurant owners of La Rochelle (M Foito from the Ginger and Koya restaurants and M Gashi from the Octopus restaurant).
Between September and October, when the pupils were doing their internships abroad, the teachers called “Agir pour le Cambodge” to design a framework for the project and understand what to communicate to suppliers in order to get ingredients or service for free. We also met with Carlos Foito and Patrice Gashi whose partnerships were keys to the success of the project.
In November, we organized a conference call with people from “Agir pour le Cambodge”, our two partners and the pupils so as to get everyone fully committed.
As the objective of the charity was to support young people for their one-year training plus bed and board, we had to raise as much money as possible. As a consequence, we decided to open the reservations to 100 guests.
Between November and February we kept busy, approaching potential sponsors, creating flyers which explained the tax return for donations. Our partners got each and every ingredient –be they solid or liquid- for free. In the meanwhile, some pupils placed phone calls to request donations of floral arrangements, a red carpet, free crockery, glassware and a big screen rental.
Other pupils rehearsed animations for the evening including a shadow play on travelling to Asia.
We also created a digital poster with the menu with a QR code leading to the reservation page and a slideshow to thank all the suppliers.

Eventually, on March 24, just over a hundred people came to the dinner.
M Colombié, president of “Agir pour le Cambodge”, attended the evening as well as M de Bellis, the Hotel and Catering School Headmaster.

The European Section students were joined by a first year class students to help in the kitchens and for service.

It was inspiring to observe final year pupils giving advice, sharing and taking care of the younger ones.
The charity evening proved a success. The funds thus raised will allow 3 Cambodians to join Sala Baï and it was also important for students from the European section, who benefited from the Erasmus program in their internships abroad, to get involved in a project aimed at helping others in the same field of study.