About Our Guest:

What’s better than a kitchen that smells like roasted vegetables and fresh herbs?? Easy: One where elevating the lives of teenagers is the secret ingredient. 

That’s the vibe at Healing Meals Community Project in Hartford County, Connecticut—founded by my friend Sarah Leathers. Their model at Healing Meals is stunningly simple and doubly, powerful: teens prepare beautiful, nutritious meals for neighbors facing health crises, mentors show them what it means to be a good human being, and in the process, those teens discover confidence, belonging, and real-world skills they’ll use for life.

Sarah and her team have delivered 220,000+ meals since 2016. Along the way, 750+ youth have rotated through the kitchen, and 170 have earned blue aprons for volunteering 50+ hours, and 60 have reached the chef coat level after working 100+ hours. Each week, about 120 volunteers help serve ~90 families—which often amounts to around 160 people! 

What’s even more amazing is that these numbers are just the scaffolding. The lived experience? That’s where the real magic lives.

A Kitchen Where Purpose is the Secret Ingredient

Step into a Healing Meals shift and you’ll see teens and adults moving like a jazz ensemble—huddling up to celebrate and plan, and then chopping, roasting, packaging, labeling, laughing. Phones go away (it’s a no-phone zone), and everyone begins their day in a circle with names and a short prompt. Sometimes it’s light and funny; sometimes it nudges vulnerability. Either way, everyone is seen and valued.

Jobs rotate. A teen might wash crates of farm-fresh kale one day, and lead sauté the next. Adults mentor without hovering, and on any given night, you might catch the executive chef mopping the floor or hauling compost—because no task outranks another when you’re feeding a community.

It’s not a performative service. It’s belonging—with hairnets.

Why Teens Keep Showing Up

Here’s the thing Sarah didn’t expect: kids didn’t just volunteer with them, they returned—week after week! The team got curious about this wonderful surprise, so they partnered with the Search Institute to measure what they felt: 

As it turns out, those shifts weren’t only teaching knife and whisk skills—they were growing important developmental relationships built on the grounding principles of trust, care, agency, and accountability.

Naturally, the stories that come out of Healing Meals are also amazing and inspiring. One young man came in very guarded after a tough start in life, but Healing Meals peeled back the armor one layer at a time: they started by giving him a steady welcome and meaningful tasks, and he eventually earned the prestigious chef’s coat. 

His mom later listed the changes she saw in her son—lower anxiety, more trust, higher confidence, better social awareness—and then she said the one line every mentor dreams of hearing:

“He has a new way he wants to live his life.”

Another teen told Sarah, breathless, about a classmate who recognized her:

“My mom got your note last night. You’re making a difference for our family.”

That’s the kind of instant, tangible impact teen hearts crave—but rarely get from traditional volunteer hours.

Five Practices You Can Steal Tomorrow

You don’t need a commercial kitchen to borrow the Healing Meals “secret sauce.” These are practices any classroom, club, nonprofit—or family—can adapt:

• Begin in a circle. Have everyone give their names and answer one thoughtful question. This rehearses speaking, listening, and presence.
  
• Make it phone-free. This one’s hard at first, but once you get past the first hump, everyone finds it liberating pretty quickly. Presence and attention is the gift that makes community possible.
  
• Give real responsibility. Teens chop, cook, package, label, and even lead. Of course, they’re going to make a lot of mistakes when they’re learning: That’s the best way to learn. Trust them, mistakes and all: Trust fuels growth.
  
• Normalize “fixing it.” You don’t worry about mistakes because mistakes are almost always fixable—especially in cooking. Soup too salty? Mismeasured the flour? Dropped a tray of ingredients? Ask the team to brainstorm together: How could we solve this? Resilience is a muscle you can build!
  
• Write one kind note. Every meal goes out with a handwritten card—you can do this yourself anywhere, and yes, sticky notes count! What’s important is making people feel cared for.
  

Impact You Can Feel (and Taste!)

Healing Meals serves families navigating cancer, maternal health challenges, mental health crises—you name it. Clients often live alone; some are overwhelmed caregivers. The volunteering teens frequently send out handwritten notes, and those can have the power to change the future: They are written, and then land, like lifelines. 

Sarah told me:

 “One client wrote back: “Thank you for saving my life.” Try telling a 16-year-old they did that, and watch their posture change.”

And then there are the babies! In the maternal health program, low-income moms receive nutritious meals during pregnancy, and when those babies arrive, photos go up on the kitchen wall—the clearest scoreboard in the world. Teens look at the wall and they know: We did that. That baby is here and healthy because we helped.

Mentors and Youth, Side-by-Side

Healing Meals is profoundly intergenerational. The adults aren’t “in charge;” they’re working alongside them, modeling steadiness, curiosity, and kindness. Teens ask them things where they work, how they chose a path, what went wrong, and how they recovered. Careers open up; Horizons widen.

Sarah even reserves four seats on her board for youth volunteers. Before their first meeting, she reminds them: 

“You’re here because your lived experience matters. Please use your voice.” 

And they do.

Nonprofits can often shy away from evaluation; Healing Meals runs toward it. They survey, learn, and tweak their methods and plans so that they have something that can help everyone involved by figuring out what questions to ask when things changed in a big way.

When growth of the charity created time pressure, they asked an OT/psych team: How can we still build executive function? When blue-apron numbers spiked, they didn’t just celebrate; they studied why—and doubled down on the conditions that made it happen.

That’s a model worth copying: love your people, measure your impact, improve your craft.

A Model You Can Start Anywhere

Maybe there’s no Healing Meals where you live—but there’s still plenty you can do:

• Join something that serves. Deliver meals, stock shelves, write notes, make calls. Even doing it once a month will make a difference—in others’ lives, and in your own!
• Be the intergenerational bridge. Invite a teen (or an elder) to learn beside you.
• Practice micro-kindness. Smile at the cashier; thank the custodian; leave a kind note on a windshield. The ripple effect is very real.
• Stay “overly optimistic.” That’s Sarah’s mantra. It’s not naïveté; it’s fuel.
• Contact Sarah: If you want to learn more, or even get some help setting up your own Healing Meals program, Sarah would love to talk to you! You can find her at [email protected]
  

Healing Meals’ genius is not a secret recipe—it’s a culture. Teen or retiree, introvert or extrovert, you walk in, set down your phone and your armor, and you are trusted with something that matters. And when you leave, you leave tired, fed, and feeling more yourself.

If this is our future, we’re in good hands.

• Healing Meals Project Website
• Contact Sarah: [email protected]

• 00:00 – Intro & Welcome
• 05:18 – How Healing Meals Supports Teens and Families
• 11:12 – Measuring Impact: Surveys and Data on Teen Growth
• 18:18 – The Transformative Power of Volunteering
• 30:20 – The Secret Sauce Behind Healing Meals’ Success
• 34:03 – Break
• 36:19 – Inside the Healing Meals Kitchen
• 44:20 – Teens Realizing Their Impact on Others
• 47:36 – How Healing Meals Changes Career Aspirations
• 52:27 – The Power of Intergenerational Relationships
• 54:06 – How to Get Involved and Spread Kindness
• 1:00:32 – Staying Hopeful and “Overly Optimistic”
• 1:04:11 – Closing Thoughts