WASHINGTON — For 30 years, D.C. Central Kitchen has been helping adults get their lives back on track - one peel, chop, and wash at a time.
Now, they are turning their attention to the young generation as they prepare to open a new cafe for at-risk youth by the end of the month.
The plan is to focus on addressing mental health problems before they manifest into mistakes.
“Life is a beautiful thing, and the worst thing that somebody can do is waste theirs inside of a cage," said Alexander Campbell II, a graduate of the adult program and now employee at D.C. Central Kitchen.
Campbell spent much of his life in prison before graduating from the program and accepting a job at the place that helped rescue him.
“Considering how many people are going there that have troubled pasts and things like that, I owe them to stop them from going down the road that I have come," he said.
He believes the mental health component is essential to the youth program's success.
One of his mentors, fellow graduate and now instructor Crystal Marshall, had to finally address her own trauma as she underwent LEAD, Inc.'s Youth Mental Health First Aid and Trauma-Informed Teaching training.
“The biggest barrier I found when I was trying to get employed was experience. I came from high school. I got locked up straight out of college…I kind of brushed them off at the time. Didn’t realize the impact at the time that they were making on my personal," said Marshall, who now serves as the Workforce Development Coordinator for D.C. Central Kitchen.
She and 22 other staff members completed the Youth Mental Health First Aid training, and 19 others became certified in Trauma-Informed Teaching.
Co-founder of LEAD, Inc. (Let's Empower, Advocate, and Do!), Kyrah Altman, explains how the training works.
Thanks to that training, Crystal can now teach young people to deal with the trauma so they don't have to deal with the effects, like she and Alexander had to do.
“I’m not a person that’s perfect. I’m not a person that hasn’t dealt with their own drama or their own barriers to employment. I’m able to be the example that I teach about, and that makes me happy," said Crystal.
This youth cafe is opening months after D.C. Central Kitchen confirmed it lost a significant portion of their homeless center contracts and thus the funding.
Chief Development Officer Alexander Moore confirms they're looking at alternative funding options, and they don't plan to scale programs back anytime soon.
The youth cafe is scheduled to open sometime in April at THEARC on Mississippi Avenue.
Moore says if you want to help D.C. Central Kitchen, you can:
- Volunteer
- Help them pass the Healthy Shelters Act by reaching out to your city council representative
- Give at dccentralkitchen.org