Progress 09/01/18 to 11/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of the MAKE Café Project remained the same as in Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 as the project continued to build on the same foundation each year. Target audiences include many demographics and community groups due to the multicultural and inter-neighborhood connections involved in the project goals. The first target demographic is refugee, immigrant, and low-income women and youth eligible to participate in the IRC's Project CHOP (CHOP) and Youth FarmWorks job readiness programs. All participants in this project are classified as extremely low-income. IRC staff conducted participant outreach through a combination of inter-agency client referrals, posting flyers at bus stops and near supermarkets and with the youth population, and increased social media outreaching strategies, such as Instagram and Facebook and tagging local organizations, in addition to word-of-mouth referrals by previous program graduates. The purpose of reaching this target audience is to recruit and enroll eligible participants into the MAKE Café Project's several food-based job-training social enterprises and meet the IRC's goals of increasing employment outcomes for low-income individuals. After the initial disruption of COVID-19 to program operations, the MAKE Café Project redesigned all its programming and business operations. The MAKE Café Project is situated in the affluent neighborhood of North Park and is directly adjacent to City Heights. Therefore, the second target demographic of this project is the North Park community, which constitutes higher-end restaurants, middle-class households, and various community organizations and businesses. Over the past three years, these community members have played a key role in supporting the creation and success of MAKE Café Project facilities, business revenue, and special events. Since the onset of this project, the IRC team has developed strong outreach connections with North Park residents and workers who support the weekly farm stand and café and local businesses who allow us to advertise our event flyers in their storefronts. With 77 job training participants served in Year 1, 55 in Year 2, and 79 in Year 3, the IRC has served a total of 211 low-income refugee and immigrant individuals with economic empowerment programming due to the MAKE Café Project. With the original grant target of serving 180 individuals, the IRC has surpassed its original by an additional 17% despite the pandemic setbacks. Additionally, the MAKE Café Project has strengthened relationships and support from San Diego's communities, particularly public institutions, universities, companies, and professionals, over the past three years. In Year 1, the MAKE Café Project developed a robust college internship program with several local universities and partnered with universities and the County of San Diego to cater with Project Chop. Private sector relationships also grew from material donations to technical advisors and other experienced professionals advising in MAKE Projects' social enterprise growth, which grew to new heights off in Year 3. Despite COVID-19's impact on MAKE Projects redesign, business operations grew phenomenally. As a result, internal discussions about long-term MAKE Project sustainability began in August 2020, continued through the fall, and concluded with IRC's first-ever spin-off of a program into a new organizational entity. On July 1, 2021, MAKE Projects legally separated from the IRC and became an independent entity in fiscal sponsorship by Mission Edge, a San Diego-based non-profit and business incubator. As a result of Year 3's spin-off development, MAKE Projects has benefited from extensive pro bono consulting from Social Venture Partners (SVP) and a dedicated team of expert professionals in business, accounting, organizational development, board development, marketing, and human resources. Additionally, MAKE Projects also created its own Advisory Board comprised of many talented professionals lending their expertise and time to further the growth of MAKE Projects. Over the past three years, the MAKE Café Project and its message of celebrating refugee and immigrant contributions through social enterprise have already made a significant impact on the clients who participated and the community at large. Changes/Problems:In Year 1, MAKE Projects experienced a 10-month construction delay of the project's new commercial kitchen facility. Despite this setback, the IRC could still accomplish its goals for Year 1. In Year 2, the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in March 2020 caused all MAKE Café Project activities to go remote, pausing all on-site and in-person activities. The team immediately shifted into a crisis support mode for all current and past participants with unemployment assistance services, teaching digital literacy skills and adopting new technologies as their children's education went online. Despite the team being on track in Year 2 to host a third Around the World event on March 14, 2020, focusing on visual artists, the pandemic's beginning caused a myriad of shutdowns. The MAKE Projects team endured a four-month path of remote work, pivoting all job training programs to remote learning; pausing all business operations (except for the farm, which would relaunch a touch-free CSA in May); and working fervently to connect to low-literacy, low-income refugee and immigrant individuals in a now, wholly high-tech world of Zoom meetings. Due to the pandemic and consequent need for social distancing in the kitchen and more strict control of kitchen usage, the MAKE Projects team paused on additional FoodWorks training for the remainder of Year Two. These changes to the timeline had pushed back the dissemination of results to Year 3. Fortunately, at the onset of Year 3, the Cohorts were able to kick-off, and all deliverables and activities were met. There are hence, no changes to report for Year 3 nor in this final culmination report. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Throughout Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3, all IRC project staff significantly increased their employment casework skills due to this project. Furthermore, each year all IRC team members continued to increase their business and marketing skills and understanding as a direct result of the revenue goals stated in the IRC's project work plan and the massive disruptions and threats imposed by the coronavirus on the food and hospitality sectors. In Year 3, all IRC project staff were able to significantly increase their social enterprise expertise as the program expanded its enterprise operations to achieve a self-sustainable level of funding without grant dependency. In Year 1, the MAKE Café Project provided employment and business training to 70 low-income individuals due to their participation in either the FarmWorks, CHOP, or FoodWorks training programs. Further, 30 FarmWorks participants received 100 hours each of job training experience. IRC staff provided 400 hours of direct staff training to participants throughout four cohorts throughout the year. After an initial orientation and training period, FarmWorks participants received seven hours each week of hands-on work experience harvesting, setting up, and operating the Farm Stand and MAKE Garden Café. Twenty-nine (29) Project CHOP Production Assistant-level participants received on average 320 hours of paid transitional work experience. IRC staff provided nearly 900 hours of direct training and supervision to Project CHOP participants during the reporting term. Participants worked on average 17 hours in the commercial kitchen each week and were directly responsible for making all Project CHOP commercial food products under the supervision of IRC's Chef/Trainer. CHOP participants also received three hours of vocational English or job readiness training with the Culinary Program Coordinator. Eleven (11) FoodWorks participants received approximately 40 hours of financial, legal, and kitchen logistics training for commercial food production and operating a small food business. All MAKE Project participants received Food Safety training and a temporary food handlers card. In Year Two, the MAKE Café Project provided employment and business training to 55 low-income individuals by participating in FarmWorks, CHOP, or FoodWorks training programs. 26 FarmWorks participants received 80-100 hours of job training experience. After the pandemic began, the project team revised the FarmWorks training program to a shorter eight-week program to incorporate more social distancing and smaller participant ratios per cohort. However, this change required shortening the program length from 3 months to 2 months to serve the same number of participants per year. 12 Project CHOP Production Assistant-level participants received on average 320 hours of paid transitional work experience. During the reporting term, IRC staff provided nearly 600 hours of direct training and supervision to Project CHOP participants. Participants worked on average 15 hours in the commercial kitchen each week and were directly responsible for making all Project CHOP commercial food products under the supervision of IRC's Chef/Trainer. CHOP participants also received three hours of vocational English or job readiness training with the Culinary Program Coordinator. Additionally, Project CHOP enrolled five participants in an advanced Culinary Arts training cohort in the spring of 2020. This short training provided advanced commercial culinary skills to participants with moderate English skills and offered low-skill kitchen employees the chance to move up the income ladder. 12 FoodWorks participants received approximately 40 hours of training in financial, legal, and kitchen logistics for commercial food production and small food business operations. All MAKE Project participants received Food Safety training and a temporary food handlers card. In Year 3, the MAKE Café Project provided employment and business training to 79 low-income individuals by participating in the FarmWorks, CHOP, or FoodWorks training programs. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In Year 1, the project results had not yet been disseminated to communities of interest. This was in part due to the delay of the commercial kitchen facility. Further, due to the unusual nature of Year 2, marked by both the COVID-19 lockdown and then re-launching in the summer of 2020 with new businesses and program models to an uncertain consumer market and the broader community, a large part of Year 2 efforts were instead focused on research and development. However, after re-opening a new COVID-mitigated MAKE Café Project, IRC began disseminating results to communities of interest. IRC continued to document and build a robust and informative report on the benefits of employment social enterprises to share, partner, and collaborate with a broader network of supporters. In fact, in Year 3, the MAKE Projects team summarized its experience into a culmination 3-year report for dissemination to all local San Diego non-profits and throughout the national IRC and social enterprise network. Project Director Anchi Mei was also selected to be part of the 2021 REDF National Accelerator Program and shared her experience with MAKE Projects within a national dialogue of employment social enterprise practitioners. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?As mentioned in the Year 3 report, the MAKE Project has worked closely with project evaluation consultants at Point Loma Nazarene University to review program outcomes over the past 3 years and summarize our accomplishments and best practices for dissemination. The final evaluation reports of the PLNU evaluation staff were well-received by the MAKE Projects team. Given the historic, unprecedented nature of the past two years with a global pandemic and the MAKE Café Projects' incredible project journey from concept to full implementation to the corporate spin-off, the project team was happy to be still operational while persevering through all the project challenges. However, having a third-party evaluator document, analyze, and share our impact on such a poetic and profound level is a privilege and honor. With the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in San Diego County and the warm, outdoor-friendly summer months, MAKE Projects is looking forward to continuing to scale up operations and social impact far beyond the period of this grant. The CFP grant has built a strong foundation and carried the program through the early challenges of learning, experimentation, confronting challenges, and successfully pivoting. The team and operations have been resilient, and the program is ready to scale to serve more job-training participants and customers. The group recently received a $75,000 grant to expand farm business operations threefold and quadruple youth trainees over the summer to 24 participants. All youth trainees will now be paid $15 an hour as part of MAKE Projects' new social enterprise-driven model. The MAKE Project completed its five-year business plan and pro forma analysis, which formed a clear roadmap for years ahead as described below: Five-year Business Plan In July 2021, the MAKE Projects team, with the support of three members of its Advisory Board and six volunteers from San Diego Social Venture Partners, created a 2025 Business Plan document. This MAKE Projects 2025 Business Plan articulates a clear social enterprise operations plan, growth model, and financial projections to achieve 80% financial self-sufficiency (through business income) and tripling social impact by 2025. This eventual business model reduces MAKE Projects' cost per participant by 4X. At the time of this writing, the Delta and Omicron variants significantly impacted business income results in 2021. However, the MAKE Projects team has continued to pivot and sustain operations. Pro Forma Analysis The pro forma analysis of the Business Plan primarily rests on the assumption of a full-scale, 80-seat brick and mortar restaurant to drive the heart of business revenues and client impacts in 2025. Currently, the Saturday-only, outdoor MAKE Café is a limited operation that is not capable of scaling up to significant revenues. The Pro Forma Analysis has given the MAKE Projects leadership team clarity and conviction in seeking a new, expanded facility/location to realize the full potential and long-term sustainability of a MAKE Projects social enterprise program for refugee and immigrant women and youth. Conclusion USDA CFP funding and support for the MAKE Café Project has been the journey of a lifetime. Reflecting over the past three years of this project and the slow, steady, and unpredictable growth and pivots of this project in just three short years, the Project team is grateful for the USDA's belief in the potential of this program and all its ambition. And in planting its confidence and resources in MAKE Projects, the team has, against improbable odds, indeed realized its dream of a social enterprise program that can further grow its confidence and aids in refugee and immigrant women and youth across San Diego. While the Project, staff, participants, and the community have suffered significant setbacks, we have all overcome and continue to work, strive and dream of a better day for everyone in our community. And in so doing, the MAKE Café Project has genuinely realized the best outcome possible.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
?Goal #1: A major milestone in Year 1 was creating a new project space that would house MAKE Café activities such as cultural arts performances and a pop-up marketplace for refugee and immigrant food entrepreneurs. The IRC team transformed a vacant dirt lot with an outpouring of material donations and volunteer hours to excavate, grade, and lay down new pavers into an inviting 1,200 square foot courtyard and entrance pathway, adjacent to IRC's FarmWorks farm site. The IRC named this site Pop on 30th to reflect the "pop-up" nature of the many types of activities that will be housed there (e.g., marketplace, café, concerts, farm stand). Since its completion in July 2019, Pop on 30th has become a much-improved space for the FarmWorks farm stands twice a week. Additionally, with the construction of the St. Luke's Episcopal Church completed in July 2019, the IRC team could launch the MAKE Garden Café, a weekly pop-up café on Saturdays. The MAKE Garden Café is staffed by Youth FarmWorks participants serving food produced by Project CHOP participants. The IRC held its first cultural arts event--Around the World: Food+Art Fair--on August 10, 2019. Over 80 members from North Park, City Heights, and other parts of San Diego attended the event, which included a City Heights-based participatory photography exhibit from The AjA Project and a dance performance from another local refugee-based organization, Karen Organization San Diego. In Year 2, with the completion of a new Pop on 30th stone patio in summer 2019, the Project started delving into its many pop-up café activities. The team was able to make terrific use of the site with a regular, weekly MAKE Café on Saturdays that: 1) provided more food handling experience and customer service experience for FarmWorks participants; 2) housed a separate food booth operated by one of the FoodWorks graduates to prototype her tamales food business; and 3) provided Project CHOP an additional food business outlet to create more custom, niche food products featuring seasonal, locally-grown and FarmWorks-specific items. In addition to launching the MAKE Café with a garden patio, the vacant lot transformation provided a new space to host community and cultural arts events. In December, the MAKE Projects team collaborated with IRC's Small Business Development Center to co-host a Holiday Bazaar with 7 emerging refugee entrepreneurs. In February 2020, the Senior Program Manager held the first P-PATCH meeting with seven FarmWorks and CHOP participants on-site at the MAKE Café. The FarmWorks Program created a new online-based job training cohort and developed a weekly CSA newsletter and monthly MAKE Magazine to provide still real, paid work experience to FarmWorks participants. In June 2020, the IRC was officially awarded its first Creative Communities grant from the City of San Diego's Arts and Culture Commission. This grant would provide additional funds to help the MAKE Projects team conduct its Year Three Cultural Arts Exhibits at the MAKE Café with even more staffing resources and stipends for refugee and immigrant artists. Staff spent July and August designing a new way of launching cultural arts events on-site through the upcoming year while also maintaining COVID-safety measures. While the spring of 2020 presented numerous challenges, it also provided the project team a chance to deeply connect, begin to think collectively as one team unit and venture forth with boldness, bravery, and more business acumen. Finally, in mid-August, the team unveiled a new Project CHOP-led MAKE Garden Café with hand-plated, cooked-to-order foods from a globally-inspired brunch menu. This new invigorated MAKE Café space also allowed the project team to engage with local North Park restaurants struggling without outdoor dining spaces to partner and hold several collaborative outdoor dining spaces at Pop on 30th, the new MAKE Café space. Year 3 proved to be the best year for the MAKE Café. Due to the awarding of a City of San grant, the IRC team was able to supplement CFP funds with $19,000 in additional staff salaries and participant stipends with local refugee, immigrant, and low-income artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs with special cultural arts exhibits at the MAKE Café. Over the past year, the MAKE Café held a Burmese Karen Weaving exhibit, a virtual Holiday Bazaar, and seven live concerts featuring refugee musicians and DJs. Goal #2: In Year 1, the MAKE Project found an interim commercial kitchen facility to rent and operate its employment-based programming without significant impacts to the project goals and outcomes. The two early employment programs enrolled a total of 59 individuals, far exceeding its year 1 target of 45 enrollments. Altogether, 22 individuals were supported with job placements due to their CHOP or FarmWorks program participation in Year 1. When the IRC moved into its new commercial kitchen facility at the end of Year 1 it immediately ramped up its social enterprise operations with an effective catering marketing campaign and launched a weekly, on-site café business. In addition, the IRC team improved its client training curricula and enterprise operations procedures along with participant evaluation and data collection procedures. In Year 2, the team's experience with social enterprise elevated the importance of the social enterprise program model and underscored the following points: Being paid to work is a pivotal part of the client training experience Having real work experience in the US is essential to finding gainful employment Only a natural work environment can illustrate the importance of concepts such as working hard, asking questions, problem-solving A front-of-house customer service experience, such as in the Café, is incredibly valuable to low-literacy refugee and immigrant women in Project CHOP Furthermore, , the team forged a unified social enterprise brand and identity as one company rather than various independent programs such as Project CHOP and FarmWorks. Together in Year 2, MAKE Projects supported 55 participants with approximately $7,000 in stipends for Youth FarmWorks participants and $56,589 in wages for Project CHOP participants. Furthermore, 80% of Project CHOP graduates were successfully placed into jobs after completing Project CHOP. Goal #3: In Year 1, the project enrolled 11 participants in its culinary business program, FoodWorks, in this first year of the grant. This included three Youth FoodWorks participants in June 2019 and eight Adult FoodWorks participants in August 2019. The three Youth FoodWorks participants learned to operate the MAKE Garden Café, and each piloted a food product in the café during the program. In August, one Youth FoodWorks participant also returned to vend her Thai beverage product within the MAKE Garden Café during the "Around the World: Food+Art Fair" special event. The Adult FoodWorks training cohort was also a great success, as each participant learned about food business development.. In Year 2, the team continued its strong partnership with IRC's Small Business Development Center staff to enroll and train a second FoodWorks cohort with 12 total participants. One of the August 2019 FoodWorks graduates sold her tamales at the MAKE Café pop-up booth throughout 2019. In Year 3, the team continued strong partnership with IRC's Small Business Development Center staff to enroll and train 22 total participants in food entrepreneurship. One group was an entirely Arabic-speaking cohort, and another was an altogether Swahili-speaking cohort.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of the MAKE Café Project remained the same as in Year 1 and Year 2 as the project continued to build on the same foundation and goals as the previous year. Target audiences include many demographics and community groups due to the multicultural and inter-neighborhood connections involved in the project goals. The first target demographic is refugee, immigrant and low-income women and youth eligible to participate in the IRC's Project CHOP and Youth FarmWorks job readiness programs. All participants in this project are classified as extremely low-income. IRC staff conducted participant outreach through a combination of inter-agency client referrals, flyering at bus stops, near supermarkets and with the youth population, and increased social media outreaching strategies, such as Instagram and Facebook and tagging local organizations. The purpose of reaching this target audience is to recruit and enroll eligible participants into the MAKE Café Project's several food-based job-training social enterprises and meet the IRC's goals of increasing employment outcomes for low-income individuals. After the initial disruption of COVID-19 to program operations, the MAKE Café Project redesigned all its programming and business operations. It continued to enroll and serve 57 low-income, refugee or immigrant job-training participants in Year 3 to date. Additionally, 22 refugee participants enrolled in a food business training program, FoodWorks, as part of Year 3 CFP deliverables. In total, 79 participants were served by MAKE Café Project in Year 3. With 77 job training participants served in Year 1 and 55 in Year 2, the IRC has served a total of 209 low-income refugee and immigrant individuals with economic empowerment programming due to the MAKE Café Project. With the original grant target of serving 180 individuals, the IRC has surpassed its original objective by an 16 percent, despite the pandemic setbacks. Additionally, the MAKE Café Project continued to strengthen relationships and support from San Diego's at-large communities with the assistance from technical advisors and experienced professionals advising MAKE Projects' social enterprise growth. Due to COVID-19's impact on the MAKE Project's redesign, business operations actually grew significantly. As a result, internal discussions about long-term MAKE Project sustainability began in August 2020, continued through the fall, and concluded with IRC's first-ever spin-off of a program into a new organizational entity. On July 1, 2021, MAKE Projects legally separated from the IRC and became an independent entity. Through this spin-off development, MAKE Projects has benefited from extensive pro bono consulting from Social Venture Partners and a dedicated team of expert professionals in the areas of business, accounting, organizational development, board development, marketing and human resources. Additionally, MAKE Projects also created its own Advisory Board comprised of many talented professionals lending their expertise and time to further the growth of MAKE Projects. Changes/Problems:No significant problems arose this period. Despite the ongoing pandemic, IRC was able to address all of its deliverables successfully. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In Year 3, the MAKE Café Project has provided employment and business training to 79 low-income individuals by participating in either the FarmWorks, CHOP or FoodWorks training programs. Additionally, all IRC project staff have significantly increased their social enterprise expertise as the program continues to expand its enterprise operations and achieve a self-sustainable level of funding without grant dependency. In Year 3, the MAKE Café Project has provided employment and business training to 79 low-income individuals by participating in either the FarmWorks, CHOP or FoodWorks training programs. Additionally, all IRC project staff have significantly increased their social enterprise expertise as the program continues to expand its enterprise operations and achieve a self-sustainable level of funding without grant dependency. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The MAKE Projects team is looking forward to summarizing its experience into a comprehensive report in the fall of 2021 for dissemination to all local San Diego non-profits and throughout the national IRC and social enterprise network. The initial Project Director, Anchi Mei, was also selected to be part of the 2021 REDF National Accelerator Program and is excited to share her experience with MAKE Projects through a dialogue with employment social enterprise practitioners across the nation. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The next reporting period will entail working closely with our project evaluation consultants at Point Loma Nazarene University to review our program outcomes over the past three years and summarize our accomplishments and best practices for dissemination. The CFP grant has built a strong foundation and carried the program through the early challenges of learning, experimentation, confronting challenges and successfully pivoting. The team and operations have been resilient, and the program is ready to scale to serve more job-training participants and customers. MAKE Projects will also complete its five-year business plan and pro forma analysis, which will form a clear roadmap for the years ahead. The MAKE Projects team will gladly report on the conclusions of that analysis, the three-year impact evaluation conducted by our third-party evaluators, and the last activities and summary of all project deliverables.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal #1: Create a new café and cultural arts space (the MAKE Café) dedicated to celebrating City Heights refugee and immigrant voices and building cross-cultural community support for an inclusive San Diego. Year 3 has proved to be the best year for the MAKE Café yet. After receiving a City of San Diego Creative Communities Grant, the IRC team was able to supplement CFP funds with $19,000 in additional staff salaries and participant stipends with local refugee, immigrant and low-income artists, musicians and entrepreneurs with special cultural arts exhibits at the MAKE Café. Over the past year, the MAKE Café held a Burmese Karen Weaving exhibit, a virtual Holiday Bazaar, and seven live concerts featuring refugee musicians and DJs. Furthermore, the MAKE Café's improved table service and menu have also afforded a more significant presence and voice for our job training participants to be servers interacting with customers and forming cross-cultural social connections. Customers and participants have voiced their support and joy in these experiences. Goal #2: Develop replicable models of food-based social enterprises that help low-literacy, low-income households achieve consistent food security with employment-based programming. The MAKE Project team's experience with social enterprise throughout Year 3 has continued to elevate the importance of the social enterprise program model as a viable and important way to support low-literacy, low-income refugee and immigrant individuals, particularly women and youth, with critical employment skills. The program has proven to be so successful that formed its own dedicated organization to scale up this mission of employment social enterprise programming for low-income individuals. Goal #3: Increase business and culinary skills for emerging youth and adult refugee and immigrant food entrepreneurs. In Year 3, the MAKE Projects team continued our strong partnership with IRC's Small Business Development Center (SBDC) staff to enroll and train 22 total participants in food entrepreneurship. One group was an entirely Arabic-speaking cohort and another was a Swahili-speaking cohort.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of the MAKE Café Project remains the same as in Year One as the project continued to build on the same foundation and goals as the previous year. Target audiences include many demographic and community groups due to the multicultural and inter-neighborhood connections of the project goals. The first target demographic is refugee, immigrant, and low-income women and youth who are eligible to participate in the IRC's Project CHOP (CHOP) and Youth FarmWorks job readiness programs. All IRC participants in this project are classified as extremely low-income. IRC staff conducted participant outreach through a combination of inter-agency client referrals, in-person presentations within IRC and at local community partner organizations, word of mouth referrals by previous program graduates, and posting flyers throughout the City Heights community. The purpose of reaching this target audience is to recruit and enroll eligible participants into the MAKE Café Project's several food-based job-training social enterprises and meet the IRC's goals of increasing employment outcomes for low-income individuals. Based on the IRC's extensive experience operating food security and social services programming over the past decade in San Diego, the agency believes that improvements to client employment outcomes (feeling ready and wanting to work, earning first time employment, getting a better job) correlate to improved household health and nutrition outcomes. The MAKE Café Project continues to gather data to further investigate this correlation between income and nutrition in low-income households. Despite a four-month pause in providing direct, on-site participant operations due to COVID lockdown and an abundance of caution, the MAKE Café Project was still able to enroll and serve 55 new low-income, refugee or immigrant job-training participants. This represents 92% of the Project's Year 2 target of 60 total participants. Project CHOP enrolled and trained 12 Production Assistant participants and 5 Culinary Arts participants; FarmWorks enrolled and trained 26 project participants; and FoodWorks enrolled and trained 12 participants in December 2019. The second target demographic of this project is the North Park community. This community includes higher-end restaurants, middle-class households, and various local organizations and businesses that will support the creation and success of MAKE Café Project facilities, business revenue and special events. The MAKE Café Project is situated in the more affluent neighborhood of North Park and is directly adjacent to City Heights. The project was making great strides in building community and relationships with the North Park community. However, the COVID lockdown and its ensuing devastation on the restaurant sector substantially strengthened and expanded IRC's reach into the North Park resident community. North Park's more affluent residents were looking for a way to help and support those in need. IRC also wanted to assist the many local businesses that had provided support to us prior to the pandemic with farm produce purchases for their restaurants or hiring our graduates into their kitchens. In Year Two, the MAKE Café Project created a series of outdoor dining experiences in collaboration with five restaurant partners (three new partners) while also generating nearly 100 new, and mostly local, direct customers for the FarmWorks CSA. Additionally, the MAKE Café Project continued to strengthen relationships and support from San Diego's at-large communities, particularly public institutions and universities. The MAKE Café Project has developed a robust college internship program with several local universities. College interns provide approximately 80 hours per week of valuable, hands-on services to project participants and IRC staff. Some of these universities also became catering customers of Project CHOP before COVID (e.g. Point Loma Nazarene University, University of San Diego). Other local college districts as well as the County of San Diego's Health and Human Services agency had started to contract with Project CHOP to meet their catering needs. Additionally, outside of the public sector, the MAKE Café Project had started to enjoy new private sector relationships with Deloitte Consulting and North Park Main Street (the North Park business improvement district). Furthermore, the MAKE Café Project's growing social media presence in Year Two now has generated 819 followers on Instagram, up 400% in the past year. While Year Two has been challenging as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also been a year of tremendous growth for the MAKE Café Project in terms of developing more online ways of recruiting participants, increasing customers, and spreading the mission and message of MAKE Projects. Changes/Problems:In March 2020, the MAKE Café Project team and activities went into a remote-only mode, and on-site, in-person activities paused. The team immediately shifted into a crisis support mode to all our current and past participants with unemployment assistance services, teaching digital literacy skills and adopting new technologies as their children's education went online. The team was on track to host a third Around the World event on March 14, 2020, with a focus on visual artists, including the AjA Project's participatory photography work with FarmWorks participants. However, March 2020 marked the beginning of the pandemic and associated shutdowns. Indeed, March through June would lead the MAKE Projects team down a four-month path of remote work, pivoting all job training programs to remote learning; pausing all business operations (except for the farm, which would relaunch a touch-free CSA in May); and working fervently to connect to low-literacy, low-income refugee and immigrant individuals in a now, wholly high-tech world of Zoom meetings. Due to the pandemic and consequent need for social distancing in the kitchen as well as more strict control of kitchen usage, the MAKE Projects team paused on additional FoodWorks training for the remainder of Year Two. At the time of this writing, the project team is working with SBDC staff to conduct one FoodWorks training cohort for 15 refugee cottage food business entrepreneurs and two Youth Entrepreneurship training cohorts in Year Three, all incorporating participatory photography training services by the AjA Project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In Year Two, the MAKE Café Project has provided employment and business training to 55 low-income individuals through their participation in either the FarmWorks, CHOP or FoodWorks training programs. Additionally, all IRC project staff have greatly increased their social enterprise expertise, case management provision, and employment services because of this project. Furthermore, all IRC team members continue to increase their business operations and marketing skills and understanding as a direct result of the revenue goals as well as the massive disruptions and threats imposed by the coronavirus on the food and hospitality sectors. In Year Two, 26 FarmWorks participants received 80-100 hours of job training experience. After the pandemic began, the project team revised the FarmWorks training program to a shorter eight-week program to incorporate more social-distancing and smaller participant ratios per cohort. However, this change required shortening the program length from 3 months to 2 months to serve the same number of participants per year. 12 Project CHOP Production Assistant-level participants received on average 320 hours of paid transitional work experience. IRC staff provided nearly 600 hours of direct training and supervision to Project CHOP participants during the reporting term. Participants worked on average 15 hours in the commercial kitchen each week and were directly responsible for making all Project CHOP commercial food products under the supervision of IRC's Chef/Trainer. CHOP participants also received an additional three hours of vocational English or job readiness training each with the Culinary Program Coordinator. Additionally, Project CHOP enrolled five participants in an advanced Culinary Arts training cohort in the spring of 2020. This short training provided advanced commercial culinary skills to participants with moderate English skills and offers low-skill kitchen employees the chance to move up the income ladder. 12 FoodWorks participants received approximately 40 hours of training in the financial, legal and kitchen logistics for commercial food production and operating a small food business. All MAKE Project participants received Food Safety training and a temporary food handlers card. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Due to the unusual nature of Year Two and the time spent in both COVID-19 lockdown and then re-launching in the summer of 2020 with new business and program models to an uncertain consumer market and the broader community, a large part of this year's efforst have been focused on research and development. However, at the time of this writing, and already knowing the project accomplishments and high media interest of the new COVID-mitgated MAKE Café Project, the IRC looks forward to submitting a robust report to the USDA next year with many examples of how the results have been disseminated to communities of interest. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The MAKE Projects team has had a very successful post-COVID relaunch. The team has worked extremely hard and we are quite optimistic about growing and re-gaining our business footing and back on the path to 80% business-self-sufficiency. Given the pandemic and ensuring economic recession, MAKE Projects is on target for 25% business-self-sufficiency in 2021. With a successful vaccine roll-out, the team is confident it can reach 50% the following year. The team's immediate plans in this next reporting period include reviewing new operations and preparing thorough marketing planning in the winter before relaunching in February 2021. Our P-PATCH feedback makes it clear what participants want more of in the program: more business so they can have more customer engagement and learning opportunities in a business environment. The MAKE Projects team quickly launched several new program pivots to test an uncertain customer market and make use of the warm summer and fall months before needing to pause the Café's outdoor operations due to winter rains and cold weather. The team is eager to review and improve all operations to relaunch with a clean, smooth infrastructure, materials and standard operating procedures to better train all participants and interns. The successes of the MAKE Project team through this very difficult year is a testament to the incredible talent and hard work ethic of the staff. To remain on track to accomplishing our Year Three projects goals, the Project Director is wholly committed to all the necessary ways to support and nourish the MAKE Café Project team for greater staffing and program resilience. With growing business success and operations, maintaining staff health means growing the team. To this end, the Project Director seeks to expand the team with a second AmeriCorps member and expanding hours for our Assistant Chef/Trainer. At the organizational level, the MAKE Projects team has been in high-level dialogue with IRC's senior leadership about the best path forward for growth and financial sustainability of the MAKE Café Project. These dialogues have concluded with several exciting new organizational opportunities for MAKE Projects in 2021. Indeed, MAKE Projects will be spinning off from the IRC into an independent entity in the middle of 2021. The timing of this transition will coincide with the last remaining months of the USDA CFP grant and heralds an auspicious new beginning for MAKE Projects to become a more streamlined, effective social enterprise while also having a fiscal organizational environment to scale and grow. This spin-off represents the manifestation and success of everything embodied in the USDA-funded MAKE Café Projects grant.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The IRC in San Diego is pleased to report many accomplishments in Year 2 of the MAKE Café Project. Year 2had significant successes before and after the onset of the COVID pandemic. Before COVID, theteam was rapidly making good use of the new Pop on 30th patio constructed in Year 1 as well as the new commercial kitchen facilities. After COVID struck, the team was determined to understand and learn how to adapt our business models safely. In May, the FarmWorks program re-launched with a safe, no-touch Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. Both FarmWorks and CHOP launched an online Spring job training cohort while Project CHOP paused commercial food activities. During this time, the team was also busy developing new business pivots and COVID-19 safety protocols. Ultimately, the team fully re-launch with brand new COVID-19 mitigated client training and business operations in July. Despite a global COVID-19 pandemic, the Project stayed on track in Year 2 and achieved progress in allstated goal categories below. Goal #1: With the completion of a new Pop on 30th stone patio in the summer of 2019, the Project started Year 2 delving into its many pop-up café activities. The team was able to make terrific use of the site with a regular, weekly MAKE Café on Saturdays that: 1) provided more food handling experience and customer service experience for FarmWorks participants; 2) housed a separate food booth operated by one of the FoodWorks graduates to prototype her tamales food business; and 3) provided Project CHOP an additional food business outlet to create more custom, niche food products featuring seasonal, locally-grown and FarmWorks-specific items. In addition to launching the MAKE Café with a garden patio in place, the vacant lot transformation provided a new space to host community and cultural arts events. In November, the MAKE Café Projects team held its second Around the World event, showcasing a dynamic line-up of dance and music performances featuring refugee and immigrant performers from both City Heights and throughout San Diego. In December, the MAKE Projects team collaborated with IRC's Small Business Development Center to co-host a Holiday Bazaar with seven (7) emerging refugee entrepreneurs. In February 2020, the Senior Program Manager held the first P-PATCH meeting with seven FarmWorks and CHOP participants on-site at the MAKE Café. The FarmWorks Program created a new online-based job training cohort and developed a weekly CSA newsletter and monthly MAKE Magazine as a way to still provide real, paid work experience to FarmWorks participants. MAKE Magazine is an exciting way to spread the vision and voice of MAKE Café cultural arts activities in an era where social distancing is still required. MAKE Magazine has not only provided a platform for refugee and immigrant youth to voice their creative, personal thoughts and feelings (from their favorite comfort foods to the death of George Floyd) to a wide audience while also incorporating spotlights on local farmers, food system partners and other refugee and immigrant organizations. In June, the IRC was officially awarded its first Creative Communities grant from the City of San Diego's Arts and Culture Commission. This grant would provide additional funds to help the MAKE Projects team conduct its Year 3 Cultural Arts Exhibits at the MAKE Café with even more staffing resources and stipends for refugee and immigrant artists. However, the grant was written in the fall of 2019 before COVID. Staff spent July and August designing a new way of launching cultural arts events on-site through the upcoming year while also maintaining COVID-safety measures. In August, the team would begin planning its first "outdoor museum" event utilizing not just the Café but all the farm, exterior fence, and sidewalk to create a self-guided, socially distanced, multi-media tour. Throughout the spring, the team researched best practices for businesses adapting to COVID safety measures around the world, and eventually developed a new line of business operations and program safety procedures to re-open in July 2020. While the spring of 2020 presented numerous challenges, it also provided the project team a chance to deeply connect, begin to think collectively as one team unit, and to venture forth with boldness, bravery, and more business acumen. Finally, in mid-August, the team unveiled a new Project CHOP-led MAKE Garden Café with hand-plated, cooked-to-order foods from a globally-inspired brunch menu. The team spent all of June and July revamping the Pop on 30th space into a beautiful, alfresco dining space with generous social distancing. The new MAKE Café features table service and a high level of logistics and communications that make for a fantastic job training experience for both front of house and back of house Project CHOP participants. Furthermore, this new invigorated MAKE Café space also allowed the project team to engage with local North Park restaurants struggling without outdoor dining spaces to partner and hold several collaborative outdoor dining spaces at Pop on 30th, the new MAKE Café space. The first of many events was held on September 1, 2020 and will be reported on in further detail in IRC's Year Three Progress Report. Goal #2: The MAKE Project team's experience with social enterprise throughout Year 2 has further elevated the importance of the social enterprise program model as a viable and important way to support low-literacy, low-income refugee and immigrant individuals, particularly women and youth, with critical employment skills. The team's experience in Year 2 underscore the following points: Being paid to work is a pivotal part of the client training experience Having real work experience in the US is essential to finding gainful employment Only a real work environment can illustrate the importance of concepts such as working hard, asking questions, problem-solving A front-of-house customer service experience, such as in the Café, is incredibly valuable to low-literacy refugee and immigrant women in Project CHOP Furthermore, in Year 2 the team was able to forge a unified social enterprise brand and identity as one company rather than various independent programs such as Project CHOP and FarmWorks. The team now identifies as one MAKE Projects collective with different program lines that collaborate. Altogether, in Year 2the MAKE Project's social enterprise program supported 55 participants with approximately $7,000 in stipends for Youth FarmWorks participants and $56,589 in wages for Project CHOP participants. Furthermore, 80% of Project CHOP graduates in Year 2were successfully placed into jobs after their completion of Project CHOP. Goal #3: In Year 2, the MAKE Projects team continued our strong partnership with IRC's Small Business Development Center (SBDC) staff to enroll and train a second FoodWorks cohort with 12 total participants in December 2019. Many of these participants are refugee parishioners at St. Luke's Episcopal Church and have hopes of opening a collective catering business within the church one day. One of the August 2019 FoodWorks graduates participated throughout the fall of 2019 and into the winter of 2020 selling her tamales at the MAKE Café pop-up booth. She was a big success with the local neighborhood and was working with SBDC staff to start her own business at local farmers' markets before the pandemic struck.
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Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:The MAKE Café Project's target audiences include many demographic and community groups due to the multicultural and inter-neighborhood connections of the project goals. The first target demographic is refugee, immigrant and low-income women and youth who are eligible to participant in the IRC's Project CHOP (CHOP) and Youth FarmWorks & Café (FarmWorks) job readiness programs. All IRC participants in this project can be classified as extremely low-income. IRC staff conducted participant outreach through a combination of inter-agency client referrals, in-person presentations within IRC and at local community partner organizations, word of mouth referrals by previous program graduates and posting flyers throughout the City Heights community. The purpose of reaching this target audience was to recruit and enroll eligible participants into the MAKE Café Project's several food-based job-training social enterprises and thus meet the IRC's goals of increasing employment outcomes for low-income individuals. Based on the IRC's extensive experience operating food security and social services programming over the past decade in San Diego, the agency is clear that increased employment outcomes (feeling ready and wanting to work, getting a first job, getting a better job) also links to better health and nutrition outcomes. The MAKE Café Project is also gathering and tracking longitudinal data to further investigate this correlation between household income and nutrition in low-income households. Altogether, the MAKE Café Project enrolled 70 low-income, refugee or immigrant beneficiaries in its first year, exceeding its Year One target of 60 participant enrollments by 17%. The second target demographic of this project is the North Park community of higher-end restaurants, middle-class households, and various community organizations and businesses that will support the creation and success of MAKE Café Project facilities, business revenue and special events. The MAKE Café Project is situated in the affluent neighborhood of North Park and is directly adjacent to City Heights. Over the past year, the IRC team has developed strong outreach connections with North Park residents and workers who support the weekly farm stand and café, as well as local businesses who allow us to advertise our event flyers in their storefronts. Additionally, two North Park businesses have also become new employers of FarmWorks graduates in the past year as well. Over the past year, the IRC team has also seen a wellspring of support from the broader San Diego community at-large, from universities, companies and individuals residing in other neighborhoods. From material donations from companies located in East San Diego, to catering customers from universities and companies located throughout Central San Diego and volunteers driving nearly 30 minutes one way, the MAKE Café Project and its message of celebrating refugee and immigrant contributions through social enterprise has already made significant inroads here in its first of three years. Changes/Problems:As noted earlier, there was a 10-month construction delayof the project's new commercial kitchen facility, yet the IRC as able to accomplish its goals for Year 1 despite this setback. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The MAKE Café Project has provided employment and business training to 70 low-income individuals as a result of their participation in either the FarmWorks, CHOP or FoodWorks training programs. Additionally, all IRC project staff have greatly increased their employment casework skills as a result of this project. Furthermore, all IRC team members have and continue to increase their business and marketing skills and understanding as a direct result of the revenue goals stated in the IRC's project work plan. In Year One, 30 FarmWorks participants received 100 hours each of job training experience. IRC staff provided 400 hours of direct staff training to participants over the course of four cohorts throughout the year. After an initial orientation and training period, FarmWorks participants received seven hours each week of hands-on work experience harvesting, setting up and operating the Farm Stand and MAKE Garden Café. Additionally, the IRC team would provide three hours of small-group instruction in job readiness topics. Twenty-nine (29) Project CHOP Production Assistant-level participants received on average 320 hours of paid transitional work experience. IRC staff provided nearly 900 hours of direct training and supervision to Project CHOP participants during the reporting term. Participants worked on average 17 hours in the commercial kitchen each week and were directly responsible for making all Project CHOP commercial food products under the supervision of IRC's Chef/Trainer. CHOP participants also received an additional three hours of vocational English or job readiness training each with the Culinary Program Coordinator. Eleven (11) FoodWorks participants received approximately 40 hours of training in the financial, legal and kitchen logistics for commercial food production and operating a small food business. All MAKE Project participants received Food Safety training and a temporary food handlers card. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project results havenot yet been disseminated to communities of interest. Due to the delay of the commercial kitchen facility, the IRC expected subsequent years to be far more successful and plan to continue documenting and building towards a robust and informative report on the benefits of employment social enterprises. The IRC expects to begin disseminating an early report of the project's results towards the end of Year Two so as to be able to share, partner and collaborate with a wider network of supporters as the project concludes in Year Three. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The IRC's MAKE Café Project team is already off to a running start in the project's second year. The team is busy meeting client enrollment targets, improving job placement outcomes, and collecting data to demonstrate the multiple research lines embedded in this project. With project facilities now firmly built out, the IRC will primarily focus on supporting its staff and participants to rapidly grow its social enterprise revenues. The MAKE Café Project team will intensely cultivate more catering customers, develop more Project CHOP special catering events located on Pop on 30th next to a beautiful urban farm, and pilot the development of a profitable MAKE Café line of menu items to bring the FarmWorks program closer to its sustainability goals. The team will work closer with North Park businesses to create employment pipelines for FarmWorks and CHOP graduates, as well as more restaurant sales connections for FarmWorks-grown produce. Year Two's focus will shift towards ensuring all social enterprise activities fit within long-term financial sustainability goals. With a combination of experimentation, determination, innovation and collaboration, the MAKE Café Project team is eager to take its projects to new levels of business growth while also creating positive participant outcomes. The MAKE Café Project team is looking forward to focusing on developing many new connections with refugee and immigrant artists, musicians, dancers and performers to make the MAKE Garden Café a successful cultural arts venue and marketplace. The project team will work closely with the P-PATCH and MAKE Leadership team to develop more programming, events and opportunities for City Heights residents to increase their voice and self-sufficiency through the MAKE Café Project. With reporting, casework and operational procedures all built out, the IRC team will continue to expand its volunteer base from IRC college interns to technical experts in the community at-large to more North Park residents, all working together and meeting the MAKE Café Project's ambitions to lift refugee and immigrant lives through sustainable social enterprise.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The IRC in San Diego is pleased to report many accomplishments in Year One of the MAKE Café Project. Despite a 10-month construction delay of the project's new commercial kitchen facility, the IRC team achieved a significant majority of all our Year One milestones towards achieving the Project's three goals listed above. Goal #1: Create a new café and cultural arts space (the MAKE Café) dedicated to celebrating City Heights refugee and immigrant voices and building cross-cultural community support for an inclusive San Diego. The major milestone in FY19 for Goal #1 was the creation of an actual new project space that would house MAKE Café activities such as cultural arts performances and a pop-up marketplace for refugee and immigrant food entrepreneurs. The IRC team was able to transform a vacant dirt lot with an outpouring of material donations and volunteer hours to excavate, grade and lay down new pavers into an inviting 1,200 square foot courtyard and entrance pathway. Additionally, the courtyard and pathway were framed with new redwood vegetable beds and a drought-tolerant garden to frame the seating space with aesthetic plantings, educational gardens and a visual connection to the adjacent FarmWorks farm site. The pavers and redwood beds were donated from local landscaping companies; a private donation paid for the site excavation, fill removal and grading costs; and the courtyard design was developed with pro-bono design services with a local architecture and planning firm. The majority of the pavers were laid down over the course of three volunteer days. The IRC has named this site Pop on 30th to reflect the "pop-up" nature of the many types of activities that will be housed there (e.g. marketplace, café, concerts, dance performances, visual arts exhibits, speaker events, farm stand). Since its completion in July 2019, Pop on 30th has become a much improved space for the FarmWorks farm stands that take place twice a week. Additionally, with the construction of the St. Luke's Episcopal Church completed in July 2019, the IRC team was also able to launch the MAKE Garden Café, a weekly pop-up café on Saturdays. The MAKE Garden Café is staffed by Youth FarmWorks participants serving food produced by Project CHOP participants. The Café has added a stronger layer of communication, numeracy and literacy training for FarmWorks participants as well as a new revenue stream for program sustainability. With the completion of the Pop on 30th space, the IRC held its first cultural arts event--Around the World: Food+Art Fair--on Saturday, August 10, 2019. Over 80 members from North Park, City Heights and other parts of San Diego attended the event, which included a City Heights-based participatory photography exhibit from The AjA Project as well as a dance performance from another local refugee-based organization, Karen Organization of San Diego. The newly expanded and improved Pop on 30th space also provided a marketplace for an Iraqi painter exhibiting her portraits, a Syrian refugee food entrepreneur, a South Sudanese artist collective, an Iraqi jeweler and jewelry from a refugee women business incubator. Goal #2: Develop replicable models of food-based social enterprises that help low-literacy, low-income households achieve consistent food security with employment-based programming. As noted earlier, the MAKE Project's commercial kitchen facility was not ready until 10 months into the first year of the IRC's project term. Nevertheless, the IRC found an interim commercial kitchen facility to rent and was therefore, able to operate its employment-based programming without significant impacts to the project goals and outcomes. In fact, the MAKE Café Project's two early employment programs (assisting participants with their first jobs in the U.S.) enrolled a total 59 individuals, far exceeding its year one target of 45 enrollments. Altogether, 22 individuals were supported with job placements as a result of their CHOP or FarmWorks program participation. Many participants are still actively looking for jobs and are continuing to work with the IRC staff team to secure a job. In the final two months of this first year, the IRC was able to move into its new commercial kitchen facility and immediately ramped up its social enterprise operations with a major catering marketing campaign as well as launching a weekly, on-site café business. With full on-site commercial kitchen facilities, the IRC team has been steadily expanding business operations and increasing sales pressure. This has resulted in even more client job training benefits in terms of an added focus on public speaking due to the many customer-facing interactions in MAKE Garden Café and CHOP catering operations. The team has also witnessed the greater level of leadership, communications and level of workmanship involved in a busier work environment. The IRC team is eager to see if these hand-in-hand benefits between increased sales and participant outcomes continue to be a consistent trend; and if so, further demonstrates the replicability and sustainability of food-based social enterprise programming. In addition, the IRC team has improved its client training curricula and enterprise operations procedures along with participant evaluation and data collection procedures. The improved training materials and business procedures allowed the team to greatly expand its staffing capacity with effective volunteers use. In fact, over the course of this past year, the IRC team was supported by 12 college interns providing over 1,000 hours of volunteer service hours to MAKE Project activities. Goal #3: Increase business and culinary skills for emerging youth and adult refugee and immigrant food entrepreneurs. The MAKE Café Project enrolled 11 participants in its culinary business program, FoodWorks, in this first year of the grant. This included three Youth FoodWorks participants in June 2019 and eight Adult FoodWorks participants in August 2019. The three Youth FoodWorks participants learned to operate the MAKE Garden Café and each piloted a food product in the café during the program. In August, one of the Youth FoodWorks participants also returned to vend her own Thai beverage product within the MAKE Garden Café during the "Around the World: Food+Art Fair" special event. The Adult FoodWorks training cohort was also a great success, as each participant learned about food business development. One participant was selected to continue on as the MAKE Café Project's first food business incubator participant and has been regularly selling tamales as part of the MAKE Garden Café on Pop on 30th.
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