RainyDayChefs
ABout Us 2021
When 3 girls get together one Spring afternoon, they talk about many different things. When Neha, Ria, and Nitya got together, they chatted about their love for cooking, writing, photography, and blogging, and just like that, RainyDayChefs was born.
Ria (17)
Hello, my name is Ria Gersappe, and I am the head chef of the RainyDayChefs. My job as head chef has grown from something simple to involving the community even more with our organization. When first started RDC, my main job was to come up with nutritious, gourmet recipes and we would use these recipes for cookouts with our friends at one of our houses. These recipes were then added to the recipe section of the website. When the pandemic hit, we could not do cookouts together and I had to come up with a creative way to continue RDC volunteers cooking! Along with creating and writing the recipes, I started creating short instructional videos of my cooking to help our volunteers to cook at their own homes. With the help of my videos, I had kids from my neighborhood as young as 5 years old who started cooking with us. Growing up alongside RainyDayChefs over the last 4 years has given me lots of room to experiment with my cooking. On personal level, I’ve learnt to cook with seasonal foods and vegetables as I continue to create my own recipes and eat healthier. This organization has helped me build and enhance important skills such as teamwork, time management and how to communicate effectively, and most importantly, it has taught me the value of community.
Hi! I’m Nitya and I am the Executive Director of RainyDayChefs. I was in 4th grade when we started RDC and at that time my main goal was to cook and help people experiencing homelessness, but now one of the lessons I've learned is to share our experiences with the community and involve more people, this is why I write the blog for RDC. What started out as just the three of us helping one shelter has now turned into us supporting multiple charities with a little over 35 volunteers. One of the main reasons that we started RDC was to find a fun way to give back to the community and also involve other people, and cooking combined all of that together. Other than RDC I have multiple other activities keeping me busy. I play basketball and do Taekwondo, and I also play the cello. RDC is one of those activities that pushes you out of your comfort zone and keeps me motivated to do more, I think it's important to give back to the community.
Nitya (16)
Arnav (14)
Hello, I’m Arnav Kaja, and I’m thrilled to be a core member of Rainydaychefs. I’m currently a Freshman at Eastlake HS. I’ve been a volunteer with RDC over the last four years. I have enjoyed volunteering at many cookouts with RDC, and now, I am working closely with Ria and Nitya to learn the operations of RDC. My focus is mainly to help blog for the cookouts and garner volunteers to help keep us cooking meals for our community shelters. My highlight this summer was the effort I led to teach food-related science workshops and fun experiments at the Indian American Community Services (IACS) through RDC. Ria has been conducting these workshops related to food and nutrition at IACS for moms and youth groups since last summer. My main focus is to work with Ria on the importance of healthy eating in teens and the impact of nutrition on adolescent health.
In my free time, I love to dance, play chess, and wager time to play games on Nintendo and find time to spend time with my pup Wally and all my doggy friends in my neighborhood.
Hey everyone, I’m Neha, I’m a college sophomore, and I’m the Community Director of RDC. In 7th grade, I became a founding member of the RDC journey, and I’m proud to see how many people we’ve reached out to and involved in our efforts to help those experiencing homelessness. As the Community Director, my main role is communicating with volunteers and organizations, so that we can broaden the scope of our impact. Aside from being part of RDC, you can find me reading, practicing my violin, playing video games, and binge-watching anime. With RDC, I’ve never felt like I needed something to keep me motivated. My motivation stems from seeing people’s smiles and gratitude. RDC gives me the happiness I’ve obtained from giving, and it’s taught me so much about leadership and what it means to coordinate events and communicate with people.
Neha (19)
