BATON ROUGE - Belaire High School's ProStart Culinary Program hosted a fundraiser on Friday to support students in the upcoming LA State Cooking Competition. 

ProStart, a nationwide two-year culinary arts and restaurant management program for high school students, reaches more than 200,000 students.

Belaire's students prepared for next year's competition with a mock competition during class and invited elementary and middle school students to learn about the program.

"With our younger students, we basically say to them, look, hey, we kind of already know what you're looking at and what you're wanting to do," ProStart Culinary Instructor Chef Tee said. 

"You know that, so we want to kind of put it in your mind right now, what's going on, what kind of career choices you want to make, and we're here to help you with that, to give you like, that inspiration, that motivation to get you started."

In addition to the mock competition, the class also accepted donations for cooking supplies, like aprons and food warmers. 

The LA State Cooking Competition will take place in March.