Food Program's Job Training Saved, (July 2006)

By Adam Brody

Pots clinked and clanged as the five students from the Haight-Ashbury Food Program’s 26th Job Training class bustled about Hamilton Church’s kitchen preparing their June 26 graduation feast. Roast pork loin with an apple and basil dressing followed traditional Greek salads, served in the Food Program’s dining area, beneath its ubiquitous logo of a half-shucked ear of corn with a propeller at its stalk end. The meal concluded with a warm, divine blueberry croissant puff.

But the taste left in diners’ mouths afterwards wasn’t purely sweet: Job Training manager Nyna Caputi was saying her goodbyes and, due to federal funding cuts, nobody knew whether there would be a 27th class.

The news came four days later. Thanks to a city bail-out lead by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the Food Program received the $120,000 it needed to continue the Job Training Program—a 12-week course that prepares underprivileged students for employment in the food service industry by teaching them life skills and disciplining them to collectively cook over 1,000 five-course meals a week for the soup kitchen’s clients.

“I’m thrilled that we could save this program,” said Mirkarimi. “We need more of these in other parts of the city.”

But the last-minute funding, which came during the city’s budgeting “ad-back” process, is a stopgap measure only, and $30,000 of the allocation is earmarked for an independent study of the Job Training course’s effectiveness. The Job Training program boasts an 80+ percent placement rate of students in food industry positions. But the professional success of graduates has not been formally examined.

“We place students in restaurants all over the city, but we’ve never been able to go through the process of asking how well prepared students were, what areas do we need to focus more on during the training," said Jenn Sramek, a grant writer for the Food Program. "The city thought that was an important thing to add to our request, so we added it.”

The program will also be looking at how to wean itself off of government funding. Many private foundations have ruled-out underwriting the Job Training course because it draws too heavily from public money, Sramek said. She added that an expose in the Chronicle generated considerable interest among area philanthropists, and that the Food Program will sit down with potential donors in August to discuss how to make itself more attractive to private givers and ensure it survives for another decade.

While the Job Training program is technically 10 years old, its roots can be traced back to the Food Program's early days. The May 1985 issue of the Haight Ashbury Newspaper refers to “graduates of the soup kitchen” who cooked for their hungry peers, and who took their “first steps in [returning] to work and [bringing] purpose and pride back into life.” The author of that article was John Meehan, considered by many to be the father of the Haight Ashbury Food Program.

Meehan spoke with The Beat in May at the Magnolia Pub and Brewery when the Job Training course appeared to be dead. He chose to meet at Magnolia because the soup kitchen was born in that space in the late 1970s when it was the Psalms Café (the former site of Magnolia Thunderpussy’s). One story goes that waiters there pooled their tips to host Thanksgiving dinners for the poor during the café’s last couple years. Another story claims an anonymous donor left 10 $100 bills in the suggestion box with a letter urging the café to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving. Either way, in 1979, the café closed on a high note after “farming out” turkeys to local volunteers, who cooked them and returned them to Psalms for a holiday feast that fed 400 famished folks.

Meehan, then a 19-year old homeless UCSF student, picked up where Psalms left off, raising thousands of dollars from local merchants and a fundraising concert at All Saints Episcopal Church at 1350 Waller St.—long-famed for giving compassionately to Haight denizens. All Saints hosted Thanksgiving dinners free of charge. A volunteer crew of 50—who he described as big-hearted hippies—helped Meehan make the holiday feasts possible. But attendance soon soared beyond 600 guests, and the cooking operation moved to the Hamilton United Methodist Church (its current home at Waller & Belvedere) where a program had recently closed. Hamilton also hosted free of charge at the beginning, and in 1983, the Food Program was officially established after Meehan and his fellow volunteers—a few of whom could now be hired as paid staff—were able to persuade enough supporters that hunger was not just a holiday event.

“Everybody looks in the rearview mirror back at the ‘60s, but the Haight is not on the cutting edge of community service anymore," said Meehan. "This neighborhood should have been transformed––why don't we have a center for all the runaway teenagers looking for the Shangri La that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Meehan, who left the Food Program board in 1997 to study non-profit organizing at USF, believes the Food Program itself––not just the Job Training component––is in jeopardy, as many neighbors continue to loathe the lines that form outside for lunches Tuesday-Friday. The Hamilton United Methodist Church began charging the program rent after he stepped down, and Meehan says more must be done to prevent Hamilton leaders from eventually viewing the soup kitchen as “an outsider.” He would be happy to help, but is now needed at the 1,000-client Chinatown seniors center he founded—which he operates rent-free at St. Mary’s church.

But, for now, the Job Training course is still making a positive impact. At the graduation of the 26th class, students expressed that they learned much more than they bargained for.

“When I showed up here to learn how to cook, I didn’t know I was going to learn how to grow up and be responsible,” said graduate Jonathan Powell. “Chef Dan [Vegas] told me I had to make some choices about what kind of life I wanted to live.”

Powell slept on the streets in cars and doorways while attending the program, but has recently been hired by UCSF. “I just slept wherever I could, but no matter what, I would get up and come to class the next morning,” he said. “For a person with my past to get a job with the state is pretty rare. I feel very fortunate.”

Vegas, who heads the soup kitchen meal preparation and has taught all 26 Job Training classes, had a few words to the young cooks.

“The students worked very hard,” Vegas said. “This class has come along way … if I was hiring, I’d hire you.”