| The program manager, Candace, met us at the front door to show us around. I have to say, she amazed me. She was absolutely beautiful and so sure of herself. You could tell that she absolutely loved each and every one of her students, although she was strict too. If the students did not comply with the rules, she had no problems with kicking them out of the program.
The program is targeted towards low income men and women. Some are newly out of prison, some did not graduate high school, and some (although few) even live in the shelter where the program is located. All of the students must be able to read and do basic math.
The program consists of 12 weeks of class, a 2 week internship, and 2 years of support afterwards. In an average class of 20-25 students, 55% graduate and of those, 85% get jobs in food service. (So, out of 20 people, approximately 11 graduate and about 9 of them get jobs.) Candace told us the program focuses on food service because it's a field where you can easily start at the bottom and work your way up, and you don't need a lot of what she called "paperwork" (college degrees, etc).
In the kitchen, we saw students making salisbury steak and brownies. During the program, the students work a full week Monday to Friday, helping with the shelter's lunch and preparing the entire dinner each day. As a reward, the student with the best attendance for the month gets a paid job helping with breakfast. In addition to the shelter's meals, the students prepare 90,000 heat and serve meals per year for other shelters in Philly.
To run the program, Candace employs a chef who does the training, a case manager, and two people who help the students find jobs. The students attend the classes for free and receive meals for free, but they are not paid. Candance said she did not want to train them to look for handouts. However, the students do receive financial incentives at various intervals after graduation to reward success (one $90 payment, two $250s, and one $500... most of which pay for specific things like transportation, old bills, and housing).
Because the students often live in environments that don't provide them the support they need to succeed, Candace makes sure that the program provides them with the support of a family. In addition to learning knife skills and food safety, they also learn basic life skills, like how to set up a bank account. She said after the first year in the program, the students seem to be just about ready to make the leap to independence.
The only down side to the program is the amount of canned goods that goes into the prepared meals. Each morning, a truck arrives full of all of the ingredients needed to make the day's meals and leaves full of frozen meals made the day before. We walked past an enormous rack of canned everything... soup, potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, etc. This isn't due to Candace's choice... the city specifies what they want made and which ingredients they want used. But New York just made changes to all of the meals served by the city, so perhaps changes in Philly are on their way some day soon. |
