Culinary program helps propel students out of poverty
Vermont Life Magazine
By Melissa Pasanen
Photographed by Jerry Swope
Ten culinary students stand in a row: chef coats straightened, kitchen thermometers tucked into sleeve pockets, freshly washed hands out. Chef-instructor Brian Dermody walks down the line and gives everyone a thorough once-over. They pass muster and assistant chef-instructor Jamie Eisenberg calls out: “OK, start pulling product out. Set yourselves up in a station!” The students briskly gather ingredients and pull down cookware. Mosha Hunter-Wade, 28, walks between her classmates holding a large knife, blade downward. “Sharp knife!” she announces. Standing in front of the huge tilt skillet, Allison Paquette, 25, carefully examines a recipe. “What’s render? What’s julienne?” she asks. Eisenberg hears and comes over to help.
By appearances, this class last fall in Burlington could be at any cooking school. But the teaching kitchen at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf is operating on several levels, weaving various social missions into one. Many students are taking the 14-week course in an effort to climb out of poverty. The class has a wide age range, from 23 to 52, but all students qualified to apply because they are unemployed or underemployed. The food they prepare — including donations from Vermont farms — will be distributed to needy people in the community, helping to provide hot meals and groceries to emergency shelters and homebound seniors. (This day, 18 garbage bags of kale are salvaged, ensuring that fresh, local produce is put to good use.)
As the kitchen gradually filled with the mouthwatering smells of granola baking, mushrooms browning and chickens poaching, the students shared what had brought them there. “I’ve never completed anything in my life,” admitted Ashley Ballard, 23, “but I know I’ll stick with this because it’s something I enjoy, and we want to better our lives and our kids’ lives.” Across the room, her fiancé Andrew Sorrell, 27, was packaging portions of beef casserole the class had made the day before. “I’ve wanted to be in a kitchen since I was 5, but the most I ever qualified for was being a dishwasher,” he said. “It was a great opportunity. I love to cook for other people, and I get to help myself and help others too.” Hunter-Wade, single mom of a third-grader, said she was looking for job stability, adding with a smile, “Maybe my son will start eating my cooking. He’s into McDonald’s now.”
Based on a proven national model designed for low-income students, Community Kitchen strives to create a well-rounded individual who can truly make it in the work force. “They not only have to have the right skills to get hired but to stay employed and to succeed,” says Dermody, who worked for 30 years in college dining. “We want them to have careers for a lifetime.”
In practice, that means both class time and hands-on training. Students learn basic culinary techniques and food safety certification as well as complete a work-readiness program. There are also guest chef lectures and field trips to various food service settings. Overall, the Vermont program is a partnership of the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf and Vermont Foodbank, the state’s largest hunger-relief agency, with numerous grants, fundraising and other social service agencies as part of the mix.
At the mid-December graduation ceremony, family, friends and supporters dug into an Asian-themed feast prepared by the students. Rob Meehan, Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf’s director, congratulated the group for achieving their goals and also thanked them. “You’re feeding people in need and we’re really grateful to you,” he said. Later, Meehan elaborated: “Boxes of food are necessary, but they’re just a Band-Aid to the problem. We want to create opportunities for people. I think Community Kitchen is transforming the work we do. These are people who are trying to transition from welfare to work and together we’re feeding people and rescuing food that would otherwise go to waste.”
Community Kitchen seems an especially good fit for Vermont, connecting our food scene to other traditional strengths. Greg Voorheis, senior grant manager with the Vermont Department of Labor, which provided significant support for the pilot year of the program, says, “We want to train people for real jobs and Community Kitchen fills needs in two major economic sectors: tourism and higher education. This program appealed to employers.” Another advantage, as Meehan puts it: “The thing about culinary jobs is that you can’t ship them overseas.”
Community Kitchen instructors have been able to place almost every graduate in jobs with schools, caterers, restaurants, bakeries and with college and university food service operations run by Sodexo, which has provided funds for Community Kitchen. A few students have gone on to New England Culinary Institute.
The program also strengthens the social fabric in ways that are hard to measure — students gain positive peer connections, mentoring relationships and self-esteem earned by helping others. Paul Dragon, director of Reach Up, a program of the Vermont Department for Children and Families that steers people into the kitchen program, says students “are getting something, but they’re also giving back.” Perhaps no one understands that better than the graduates themselves.
Kendra Payea was in distress — 23 years old, living in a shelter with her toddler — when she applied for the first session in January 2009. But since graduation, she has settled into a job with a company that runs military dining operations and has already earned a promotion. During one of her shifts earlier this year, Payea kneaded roll dough as a sergeant strode by. “What’s the good word? I see you’re happy as always,” he greeted her. Her constant smile is one of the many reasons her boss, Ken Mayo, quickly named her shift leader. “If we leave it to Kendra, we know it will get done,” he said. “When I first started the class, my family and I weren’t really getting along,” Payea explained. “The teachers taught us everything: how to hold a knife, how to get along with co-workers. But they weren’t just instructors. They also supported me while I figured out how to support myself and my son. Since I’ve taken control and done what I need to do, my parents have completely changed their outlook on me.” She lifted a turkey into the oven and added confidently: “Someday I want to open a chili house.”
It’s not all fairy-tale endings, of course. One promising student was headed to New England Culinary Institute, but a few months after graduation no one could track her down. Many graduates struggle a bit with their careers. After Community Kitchen, Tai Flores, 24, earned a New England Culinary Institute certificate before landing a job with Sodexo at St. Michael’s College. Last fall during a class tour of the college’s dining system, Flores was excited. “Since I signed up for the course, I’ve felt so much better about myself. I just keep reaching higher and I haven’t given up,” she said. But by spring, the single mother of a preschooler sounded tired and stressed. She liked the job and was proud of it, but, Flores acknowledged, “It’s just a hard juggle with my son.”
Hank Strashnick, general manager for Sodexo at St. Michael’s, welcomes Community Kitchen graduates like Flores and Sorrell, who is happily working the grill at the college (while his now-wife, Ashley, thrives in her job at an elementary school cafeteria). At a nuts-and-bolts level, Strashnick says, “It’s easier for them, easier for us. They’re better prepared to help us faster.” But beyond that, he simply admires their grit: “They are people who’ve maybe had a tough time, but they have made an effort to improve themselves. They are people who’ve already made a commitment to something and followed through — and that tells you something about them.”
