Ryan Wells Foundation Inc

The Ryan Wells Foundation was established in 2005 in honor of Ryan Michael Wells with a vision of enabling students to live out Ryan’s dreams by pursuing a career in the culinary arts and hospitality fields.  Ryan Wells possessed great dedication in all his endeavors, including the Boy Scouts, Scuba Scouts, and golf.  It was during Ryan’s junior year at Tarpon Springs High School in 2004 when he became actively involved in the culinary program, referred to as the Jacobson Culinary Arts Academy, and started dreaming of a career in culinary.  In June of 2005, Ryan was one out of thirty students chosen to attend the ProStart Invitational hosted by the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association at Johnson & Wales University in Miami. While returning home, he was in fatal car accident. Within the same summer, the Wells family formed a foundation to honor Ryan’s life by helping fellow students fulfill their dreams.

 

Since 2005 the Ryan Wells Foundation has supported Pinellas county students by annually awarding scholarships for post-secondary education and donating to local schools to fund the purchase of equipment, food, and other learning tools, and also attending cooking competitions. The RWF offers programs to all of the schools designed to give the students hands-on experience. For example, the Cooking for a Cause program uses schools to prepare large quantities of meals that are then donated to the Homeless Empowerment Program shelter in Clearwater. This year the RWF is launching a new program called Slow Cooking for a Cause which involves students teaching low-income families tips on how to eat healthy, save time and money, and practice kitchen safety as a family using a slow cooker. Annual fundraisers also give students the opportunity to volunteer and partner with professional chefs around Pinellas County.

 

To date, we have awarded scholarships to 108 unique students in the amount of $657,500, donated over $300,000 to the culinary programs of Dixie Hollins High School, Lealman Innovation Academy, Northeast High School, Osceola High School, Tarpon Springs High School and Pinellas Technical College, and funded the building of a teaching kitchen in Ryan’s name at the Jacobson Culinary Arts Academy in the amount of $90,000.  We have also created a program called Cooking for a Cause that has will have donated 7,600 meals to the Homeless Empowerment Program, a homeless shelter in Clearwater.