The Salvation Army & Education - Part I
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Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on The Salvation Army's New Frontier Chronicle website. To read the full article, please go HERE.
By Christin Davis
Education is empowering.
And so, as The Salvation Army works to meet the unique challenges of each community, education is often part of its work—from parenting classes to culinary arts training.
“People cannot not learn,” said Dr. Joanne McLain, who studied educational leadership and innovation, is a former administrator at Elbert County Department of Human Services, and now runs a private counseling practice. “No matter what you do, you’re learning all the time. The question is what are you learning and how will you apply it?”
At its core, McLain said, learning is sustained activity over time that results in change. For an adult, the essence of learning is no different than a child. You have to first pay attention, be aware, then find applicability.
“You can’t tell someone what to learn, but you can influence it,” McLain said. “The individual has to connect, has to be engaged emotionally for learning to really stick.”
Though goals and methods differ, many of the Army’s social services programs are engaged in education.
“In the context of Salvation Army programs, the strengths-based approach is applied to help identify and develop the existing abilities of clients, thus affirming their individual value and integrity, while also instilling new ones,” said Christopher Doughty, Western Territory social services research assistant. “Education and the perceived progress made in successfully applying that knowledge leads to increased self-esteem, confidence, motivation, and hope, and these traits, in turn, help people to implement their strengths even more adeptly, transforming a cycle of despair into a pathway of hope.”
Here, we’ve profiled four of these programs to identify their unique features while looking for trends. Collectively, these programs have three ingredients of success: outside support from an advisory board or community partnerships, an unwavering commitment from leaders and participants, and a tangible takeaway that betters an individual’s life.
Hope Harbor Culinary Arts Program, Lodi, California
At age 6, Barry Crall was in the kitchen making pancakes.
“They say you’re born to be a chef, and I guess I was,” he said. Crall trained under three chefs before becoming one in 1985 and has worked in the restaurant business ever since. He cooked at family-owned restaurants and published recipes in Northern California Fine Dining, and now is the chef instructor at The Salvation Army Lodi Hope Harbor Culinary Arts Program.
Eighty-two students have graduated since the program’s first session in January 2008, 90 percent of whom are currently working—74 percent are working in the restaurant industry.
The 86-bed Hope Harbor Family Service Center opened in 2005. Crall—a graduate of the Stockton Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC)—took the lead of the job skills training program after an advisory board member recognized the kitchen’s potential.
The Army contracted with a local college chef instructor, who mentored Crall for the first year, and helped to adapt a four-year curriculum into a 16-week course. A residential program, the culinary arts program accepts 10 students per session from area ARCs and other sobriety programs. The $5,000 per student cost is generated by grants, foundations and private funding.
The course includes academics, hands-on training, visits to food service operations and one-on-one mentoring by industry professionals to prepare students to be a prep or line cook. Each student finishes the class with a ServSafe certificate and a portfolio that details the course and includes pictures of his or her work.
“We joke that we want these students to pay taxes, because we want them to be productive members of society,” Crall said. “They come out trained as entry-level prep cooks, who could cook a breakfast line with ease.”
One graduate—despite a history dotted with prison, narcotics and violence—landed a full-time job as a chef at a local senior citizens social club. He cooks a hot lunch there every day.
Lodi’s Wine and Roses has hired nine of Crall’s students, and others work at local golf and country clubs. Crall said employers are now approaching him looking for chefs.
He recently interviewed 18 applicants for the February session.
“With a new job skill, they don’t need to turn back to what they’ve known before,” Crall said. “That’s my ministry.”
Want to know more? Watch "The Difference Food Can Make" about the culinary arts program by savn.tv.