Audrey Smallwood was wearing an apron at her family’s restaurant as soon as she could walk.
But as she grew up, Audrey, LSEHD ’27, noticed the restaurant was more than just a place to eat—it served her community as well.
“Growing up and witnessing the way [my mother] made people feel with food was something I always looked up to, and it was something that I realized I wanted to emulate in my own way,” she said.
Audrey is co-founder of Kitchens For Change, a nonprofit bringing high school students together to tackle food insecurity in her hometown of Turlock, California. Utilizing the kitchens of local restaurants after hours, the organization cooks homemade meals to distribute around the community.
Elias Rabine, Audrey’s high school peer, also has a family in the restaurant business. Noticing how the pandemic impacted the issue of food insecurity in town, Rabine said he proposed the idea of Kitchens For Change to Audrey in the summer of 2021.
“I was like, she obviously has a restaurant at her disposal, but she seems like someone who would be really interested in this,” Rabine said. “I think she would be a great person to work with on this and we’ll be able to bounce ideas off each other and come up with something really great.”
Given that feeding others had been a value of her family for generations, Audrey was immediately on board with the idea, she said.
Her family’s restaurant history traces back to 1972, when her grandmother and mother, Gloria Smallwood, immigrated to the United States from Mexico and opened a Mexican restaurant named La Morenita, Audrey said.
One of Audrey’s favorite family stories is from La Morenita’s opening night—a customer left her grandmother a tip, and she chased after them, thinking they had forgotten their money.
“To her, working at the restaurant was a privilege,” Audrey said. “It was a privilege to serve the customers, to even have customers, and it was something that she enjoyed. She was sharing her love for food with other people.”
When Audrey was in the first grade, Gloria and two of Audrey’s sisters opened their own restaurant, La Mo. The eatery hosts several homeless guests who come in and out of the restaurant throughout the day and has become a safe space for people living on the streets of Turlock, Gloria said.
This facet of La Mo holds particular significance to the Smallwood family because Gloria experienced homelessness in her own childhood.
“Having had that experience in our own life and other people helping us out for that difficult time in our life—it created compassion and understanding for others,” Gloria said.
Growing up, Audrey remembers her family constantly helping others in need, she said. When she was younger, she created storytime at La Mo, setting up chairs in the restaurant’s courtyard and reading to the children who came in after half-days of school.
“She just had this confidence and this love of teaching and inspiring those children through reading,” Gloria said. “And so I saw her always being aware of the needs around her and developing ways to meet those needs.”
Kitchens For Change started as a club at Audrey and Rabine’s high school. As word about the club spread, support and donations from members of the Turlock community increased, Audrey said.
Audrey and Rabine planned the cooking events, and the club would go into restaurants during non-business hours to work with local chefs and mass-produce the meals.
“She was very, very organized … and had a really good sense of thinking out when we were planning an event,” Rabine said.
Even as a high schooler, Audrey distributed tasks among the volunteers and made certain everyone was provided a meal, Gloria said.
“She doesn’t do it in an offensive or an arrogant way, she does it out of a gentle strength,” Gloria said. “People just rally around her naturally.”
Following the success of the club at Turlock High School, Audrey and Rabine registered the club as a nonprofit and created a second chapter of the organization at a neighboring high school.
As the organization grew, news outlets began reaching out to Smallwood and Rabine. Most notably, in October 2023, The Kelly Clarkson Show invited the two founders to speak about Kitchens for Change. Though she was nervous, Audrey said she was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to share the project with a larger audience.
“It’s been an honor having opportunities like The Kelly Clarkson show, to have a platform to share what Kitchens for Change is, to share what we are about in our mission, and to hopefully catalyze other youth around the world to do things for the common good,” Audrey said.
As Audrey and Rabine transitioned to college, they decided to step back from their hands-on work with Kitchens for Change and join the organization’s board. They now oversee the operation’s logistics and share advice with the high schoolers who currently lead it via Zoom meetings twice a month.
At Boston College, Audrey is majoring in applied psychology and human development in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. She plans to pursue a career in child grief support, she said.
“Whether it’s child group support or Kitchens for Change, both really relate back to growing up at the restaurant and being raised by the wonderful woman my mom is and her just teaching me to be a woman for others,” Audrey said.
Growing up in a restaurant and being surrounded by passionate family members shaped Audrey’s values—values that Kitchens for Change was based on, she said.
“Founding Kitchens for Change alongside my peers was truly a way for me to embody La Mo in my own way,” Audrey said. “To connect and share memories and, best of all, share food.”
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