 The partnership we have with Beautiful Rainbow Cafe started a long time ago when Chip Rowan, who was a special education teacher in the Gadsden City Schools, he came to a food entrepreneur conference we had. So I was pretty excited to meet him at that conference and he told me about this really, really nice idea of helping his students go beyond once they graduate from high school. It was a little bit more difficult for them to get into the community and become proud of themselves in the community because life skills are kind of hard to teach within the school setting. We began teaching throughout the summer over several years and their program grew and grew until they became Beautiful Rainbow Cafe. So it's a work-based learning program and the mission of the program is to use the operation of a cafe in an organic garden sort of as vehicles to teach the students that we work with who are students with significant cognitive disabilities to teach them the skills they'll need to get private community-based employment and to live more independently. My name is Chris. I'm the head cook here at Beautiful Rainbow. I help kids learn how to cook and we prefer our favorite thing to cook here is cakes and a lot of desserts. He came along into the cafe in the normal course of things as a student. I expected him to learn like everybody else but I was really almost from the very beginning very surprised because I'm a cook and I take a lot of pride in the way I cook and I know from being a cook that a lot of what you do is sort of instinctual that there are talents for cooking just like there are talents for anything. When Chris started demonstrating that he would be following the recipe and then say well I think it might be better if we did this and he would be right. He expressed interest in wanting to continue a culinary education and so that's when we first started looking around and thinking well is that even a possibility and then of course I remembered Auburn and its strengths in the food institute there. We also found out about the excellent Eagles program that is specifically for students with disabilities who can then take college courses in their area of interest like a perfect scenario for Chris. The expectations that the leaders of that program have for the students that they will go down there, they will live on campus, live with typical peers, go to school with typical peers and participate in all aspects of campus life and seeing that philosophy be put into action is really what we should all strive for as special educators. Hey Chris! Hey Chris! This is my brother right here. He knows, he knows. Where you going? I'm excited to come to Auburn because I wanted to learn new skills and I think it's going to be really exciting to be there and get to know all the people. Seeing Chris go through the whole Serve Safe program and through the beautiful rainbow program and now he's going to college. I think that this is the best part of what Alabama Extension can offer our community is to provide them with the information, the education, the tools in order to succeed or to change their lives to make it more like they would want it to be. I'm excited about the whole process of him coming off the school to help him a way of living, responsibilities but most of all with me I'm a bittersweet because he's my only child and he's coming out the next and so hey but I just try to put into consideration that it's all for the best.