UMOM is a family homeless shelter serving over 500 meals daily. Our Homegrown foodservice training program is a nine week program that incorporates three tiers of training. Homegrown is available to our UMOM residents as well as clients we are serving at our off site locations and those we recruit from a few of our partner agencies. HELPINGS is a café and market where we operate a six week barista training program. Our clients and those from partner agencies work in the café that is open to the public where the Starbucks and CK curriculum is used. Graduates from both of these programs are assisted by our employment services department for employment related activities from resume development to job placement assistance.
Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC’s innovative Providence programs are building lasting solutions to hunger, as well as the root causes of food insecurity and poverty. Their work provides culinary, hospitality, and life skills training and opportunities to gain résumé building work experience that changes lives one recipe at a time. Students also produce ready-to-heat meals, part of the 40+ million meals that the food bank and its partners provide each year for food-insecure families. In addition to the culinary and hospitality training programs, their related social enterprises include a full-service catering operation, small-scale food manufacturing, and a variety of merchandise for sale.
Reconcile Interns learn essential life and occupational skills and are connected to support services such as mental health counseling, legal aid, health care navigation, and housing and childcare assistance, among other critical services.Throughout the 14 week training program, Interns develop their communication methods, resume’ and cover letter writing, front-of-house hospitality techniques, and back-of-house culinary techniques. Attention to detail, working within a team dynamic, and time management and leadership skills are among the many transferrable skills that Interns can apply in the hospitality industry and beyond.Interns benefit from a customized program experience that is tailored to individual needs and aspirations and meets them wherever they are along their career journey. The training uses a phased approach, offering a more transformative learning experience that gives participants the time they require to develop the confidence and skills they need to be successful.In addition to the free job training and support services, participating Interns receive transportation support, an industry uniform and footwear, daily meals, and a competitive stipend. Reconcile also helps connect Interns to prospective employers.
St. Matthew’s House operates two homeless shelters and a drug and alcohol recovery program. Our food training program works with students from these facilities to provide adequate training for employment in restaurants, catering, and coffee shops. It is a four month program where students serve in our restaurant, coffee shops, catering business, and shelters.
Liberty’s Kitchen’s Youth Development Program helps young people access futures that are healthy, self-sufficient, and sustainable. Through life skills and workforce training with our café, coffee bar, catering services, wholesale food production, and school nutrition services, disconnected youth are empowered with the resources, tools, and confidence to transform their lives. Our School Nutrition Program provides undernourished school children with healthy, scratch-made meals prepared fresh onsite at their schools. By ensuring that low-income students have access to better nutrition and nutrition education in school, Liberty’s Kitchen contributes to the fight to end the epidemic of childhood obesity and increase youth achievement.
Life’s Kitchen is a community-based nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of at-risk young adults by building self sufficiency and independence through comprehensive food service and life skills training, and placement in the food service industry and continuing education.
Manna on Main Street is committed to ending hunger and the joblessness that fuels this instability. Common Grounds is a free, 9-week training program that utilizes the evidence-based Catalyst Kitchens model. Trainees engage in experiential learning, contributing to food production in Manna’s mission-driven kitchen and service of Manna’s Common Grounds Café and Common Grounds Catering Program. Classroom instruction in food service and employment competencies furthers skill development, with social services provided based on trainees’ needs. All trainees graduate with the goal of securing food service employment and a successful, sustainable career.
The FoodWorks Program offers a fresh start to low-income individuals with 12 weeks of intense culinary training. FoodWorks students learn basic cooking skills while converting fresh produce and other perishable foods into healthy meals for distribution to those in need. This includes basic cooking techniques, discipline in the workplace, and professionalism. Students also receive ServSafe® certificationand job placement. While most of the students in the program participate to develop a career, every minute of their training in the kitchen goes towards preparing meals for hungry Marylanders. By the end of a training session, a FoodWorks class will have cooked approximately 50,000 meals on average. These meals are then distributed through our online menu tonetwork partners. With guidance and support from program staff, FoodWorks graduates have been hired at some of the region’s leading venues in the hotel and restaurant industry. The Maryland Food Bank has also proudly hired some of its very own FoodWorks graduates to act as mentors for the FoodWorks program and help produce meals in the kitchen.
Inspiration Corporation’s Food Service Training Program assists low-income job seekers in attaining good, entry-level employment in the food service industry. Students have case management to help with basic needs, including transportation.In the program, students learn knife skills, soups and sauces, baking and how to work with meats, poultry, fish, and vegetables. All students test for city and state food service sanitation management certificates. Training also includes employment preparation, such as writing resumes and interviewing. During the thirteen week program, students train during brunch, lunch, dinner, and weekend shifts. They work alongside chef instructors and graduates of the program in one of our two social enterprise restaurants to learn on the job.All graduates receive job placement assistant. Staff set up interviews with potential employers and support students in their own job searches.
Project launch is a 12-month culinary apprenticeship program for populations that are considered to be difficult to employ: youth who have aged out of the foster care system, individuals who have previously been incarcerated and adults who are underemployed and lack education. Graduates receive technical culinary education, industry certification and internship and job placement services at no cost to the individual. The organization takes a “whole-person” approach to vocational training, incorporating culinary arts, nutrition education, resume writing and financial literacy. As part of the program, students give back to the community by preparing nutritious meals out of rescued and donated food for hunger relief partners. Students also get on the job training experience by working 5-15 hours a week in kitchens for good’s catering enterprise.