The third annual Naperville Food Truck Festival in Naperville next month will benefit a Naperville nonprofit celebrating a decade of building life skills among young adults with developmental disabilities.
The May 7 event at Naper Settlement is promoting at least 25 food trucks, live DJ entertainment, a beer garden, bubble artist, face painter and a vendor village featuring area businesses.
Proceeds benefit Community Access Naperville, or CAN, whose mission is to empower people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live, work and play in their communities, said Sherry Healey, a disability consultant and member of the CAN board.
CAN was developed by a group of parents who saw a need for something that felt less like a formal program for participants and more like hanging out with friends, Healey said.
“We are all about building deeper relationships and giving people dignity,” she said.
But CAN also builds upon the vocational and life skills taught by Naperville District 203 Connections program and Indian Prairie District 204’s STEPS by bringing the young people out into the community to apply what they’ve learned.
Sessions start and end at First Congregational Church, 25 East Benton Ave., and are available Monday through Friday and two Saturdays per month.
While some participants have part-time jobs or take college courses, others don’t. Healey said CAN fills in the gaps during the week, giving the young people a chance to give back to the hometown.
A typical day begins with a morning work project that includes crafting products for CAN to sell — rosaries, prayer bracelets and keychains — or helping community groups, such as the West Suburban Community Pantry, Morton Arboretum, the Naperville Public Library, the Naperville Police Department and North Central College’s Enactus program.
A popular pursuit is recycling crayons into fun shapes, such as animals, bugs, cars and trucks, flowers and dinosaurs.
During the months of June and September, CAN sets up bins at all three Naperville Public Library locations to gather broken crayons from the public.
CAN clients then remove the paper and sort the pieces by color before melting the crayons down and molding them into super crayons, which are sold on Etsy or donated to the children’s wings of area hospitals.
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The rest of a typical day is spent navigating through quality of life activities: visiting local restaurants, shopping downtown, picking out materials at the library, going to the theater to see a movie, or learning healthy eating habits like walking through a forest preserve, CAN program leader Kimberly Nierman said.
The group intentionally wears bright green shirts to stand out and show that people with special needs belong and can contribute to the betterment of Naperville, Nierman said.
Chloe Suter, who interned with the group before becoming a program assistant, said what she loves about CAN is the friendships she’s made.
Going to work is not a chore, she said. Rather it’s more like she’s spending the day hanging out with friends. “It doesn’t feel like work,” Suter said.
Intern Gianna Eckhart said because she’s the same age as many of the participants, she’s able to talk about shared experiences, such as the part-time jobs some participants have, the college courses they are taking or the latest Disney movie that’s out.
The Naperville Food Truck Festival will help CAN to continue to be involved.
Admission to the festival, which will run from 1 to 7 p.m., is $5 if purchased online by midnight May 1, or is $10 after.
Exclusive access is available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. through an early eater ticket that costs $10 in advance online by midnight May 1 or $15 after the deadline.
Children ages 10 and younger are admitted free with a paying adult.
The scheduled food truck lineup includes Aunt Tina’s Sound Bites, Auntie Vee’s Caribbean cuisine, Bricks on Wheels II Neapolitan pizza, Burritoville DeKalb, Culinary Gangster gyros, burgers and wraps, Dia De Los Tacos, Dippin’ Dots, Ferdie’s Cabin treats and marshmallows, Flyin Hawaiian, Grumpy Gaucho empanadas and churros, Happy Lobster Truck, Kissed By Fire barbecue and pizza, Looney Lumpia, Meat on the Street Filipino cuisine, My Funnel, My Mama’s Mini Donuts, Ponce Restaurant Food Truck Puerto Rican cuisine, Savory Crust Filipino cuisine and empanadas, Serna’s Grill tacos, burgers and gyros, Smiley’s Barbecue, Tickle my Tamale and Your Sisters Tomato wood-fired pizza.
Because the event falls close to Cinco de Mayo, organizer Brew Avenue Events will bring back its popular Food Truck Taco Showdown. Several trucks will feature tacos on their menu and attendees can vote on the Facebook page for the winner.