A Palm Coast nonprofit founded after the 2019 murder of a local teenager has developed a six-week cooking program designed to help students learn to manage their emotions, using eggs as a central metaphor for life’s hardships and what can come from them.
Carmen Gray founded LLC Rise Above the Violence — also known as Long Live Curtis — after her son, Curtis Iswell Gray, was shot and killed on April 13, 2019. Gray said she later learned that Curtis had been an advocate for mental health awareness and drug abuse prevention before his death, having helped start a peer-to-peer support group as part of the Be Great Movement, originally led by Enoch Henry and a young man known as Chris.
“Curtis became ‘Cat on Light,’ the forerunner,” Gray said. After his death, members of that support group asked Gray what they should do next. “My instructions to them were to continue the legacy he started,” she said. The group still meets today.
How the Program Works
The “Who Cracked My Egg” curriculum grew out of the broader impact of Curtis’s death on students throughout Flagler Palm Coast, where his death was the area’s first teenage homicide. Gray said she recognized there was no sufficient program in place to help students manage their emotions — and that her program’s launch happened to coincide with a new state requirement, introduced around the same time, requiring schools to provide at least five hours of mental health instruction per year.
Drawing on her culinary background, Gray built the curriculum around the structure of an egg — the shell, the white, and the yolk — using cooking techniques as metaphors for processing difficult emotions.
“I felt like the language of mental health would be easily digestible, readily accessible, and understandable in the kitchen,” Gray said. “An egg is not complicated. It’s comprised of three parts.”
In the program, students separate egg whites to make meringue, use yolks to make hollandaise sauce, and poach whole eggs to create dishes such as Eggs Benedict. Each technique is tied to a lesson about how people respond to disruption or trauma in their own lives. “No matter how life cracks you, something beautiful can come from what remains,” Gray said.
The full in-person program runs six weeks in the kitchen, includes 72 learning modules, a workbook, and additional materials available through an online school community.
A Social-Emotional Learning Program
Gray described “Who Cracked My Egg” as a social-emotional learning (SEL) program built around five core competencies: self-management, social awareness, self-awareness, emotional resilience, and relationship-building skills.
Gray said the program’s emphasis on these skills stems partly from her experience during the trial of the young man who killed her son. “He looked at me with just a blank expression and said, ‘I don’t know why I did what I did,’” Gray said, describing it as a clear sign the young man lacked those core competencies.
The program also incorporates leadership development and philanthropy, encouraging students to apply what they’ve learned by giving back to their communities. “It’s one thing to absorb the information,” Gray said. “It’s another thing to make them disciples of the program — to get out there and make a difference in the community and to be great.”
The program has been running since 2020, and Gray said its impact has held up over six years, based on follow-up interviews and videos with students who completed it early on.
Funding and Getting Involved
Gray said the program has used different fundraising approaches over the years, including a sneaker ball event in the past. This year, with Gray having returned to full-time work, the program is shifting toward a digital fundraising platform called GiveButter, which allows one-time, weekly, monthly, or annual donations. Gray said she is especially focused on building recurring monthly donations — even contributions as small as $25 a month — to help cover administrative costs, an upcoming train-the-trainer program, facilitator guides, a 90-page student journal, and kitchen supplies used during the program. The organization is also pursuing grant opportunities and is seeking ongoing sponsors and members.
Residents interested in volunteering can fill out a volunteer form at longlivecurt.com. Volunteers working directly with students must pass a background check, which they are responsible for completing themselves. Other ways to get involved include helping manage the program’s social media accounts and supporting fundraising efforts. As a nonprofit, the organization relies on donations from sponsors and community members to operate.
To donate directly, visit their donation page here.
The post From Tragedy to Teaching: Palm Coast Program “Who Cracked My Egg” Uses Cooking to Help Students Process Emotions first appeared on Flagler County Buzz.
