BARRE — A program that uses donated food that would otherwise go to waste is also a training ground for people returning to the workforce.
On Friday, seven culinary students who spent the past 13 weeks learning skills from food sanitation to budgeting, menu preparation to communications skills, were honored during a graduation ceremony at the Barre Community Kitchen Academy.
The graduates were previously either unemployed or under-employed. Participants receive training, equipment and tools.
The meals students produce are given away by the Vermont Foodbank’s shelvesprogram, a partnership between Capstone Community Action and The Vermont Foodbank, that began two summers ago. Friday’s graduation was the sixth for the Barre site. There is also a community kitchen program in Burlington.
The shelvesprogram captures food that would go to waste, transforms it into food people need and trains people for new jobs at the same time.
John Sayles, the CEO of the Vermont Foodbank, said the graduates are part of a “virtuous cycle.”
The short-term, high-impact program is a national model for job readiness, and participants earn college credit, according to David Rubin, director of integrated services for Capstone Community Action, who welcomed graduates, their families and friends at the Old Labor Hall on Granite Street.
Rubin said the program is rigorous: Fourteen people began the session and only half completed it.
“These seven persevered and made it to this day, which is no small feat,” Rubin said.
The event featured a diverse array of appetizers from spring rolls with mint, rice noodles and peanut sauce to shrimp cocktail, to dessert kabobs dunked in chocolate and skewered with fresh summer fruit and a decadent runway of pastries — all prepared by the graduates and their instructors.
The seven graduates — Joel P. Bonano, Suzanne Ford, Chrystina M. Janawicz, Jonathan McNerny, Eric A. Smith, Crocker Stickney and Michael W. Tulloch — all have jobs in the culinary field. Ford is opening a cafe in Berlin soon, senior chef instructor Jamie Eisenberg said.
Chef Jamie Eisenberg said she can’t wait to go out to eat at the restaurants where the graduates will be working.
“Through the sharing of food and all of that great energy, it comes back to us somehow, we’re part of this loop of reciprocating and sharing,” said Eisenberg. “We take this wonderful food that would otherwise go to the landfill. We repurpose it and turn it into food that people need and want, we package it, and the food flies off the shelves. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Stickney told Eisenberg: “I’m eternally grateful for you taking a chance on me. Thank you very much.”
Megan Smith, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, who said she has attended most of the Barre program’s graduations, and described herself as “a groupie.”
Smith was delighted when one of the graduates, Tulloch, who will go onto the New England Culinary Institute, presented her with a maple rolling pin he made.
Smith, who spent 15 years working in the hospitality industry, welcomed the culinary program graduates to “the greatest family there is, which is the tourism and hospitality industry.”
The ceremony also saw an emotional sending off of the program’s assistant chef instructor, Dave Moyer, who is leaving to work for Sodexo at Norwich University after more than eight years working for the foodbank.
Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who serves on the Vermont Foodbank board, attended the graduation. She said when she worked as secretary of the Agency of Human Services, she was part of laying the groundwork for employment programs through Reach Up, which works with the culinary program today.
“It’s nice to see a program I was personally involved in be a partner in this job-creating initiative,” she said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Community Kitchen Academy reclaims food, and people.