Baltimore Womens’s Giving Circle

Connie Crabtree’s Culinary Arts Training program successfully trains women for employment in commercial kitchens in only eight weeks.

“Every day when I go to my job… I say ‘Thank you God’… this is where I belong.”

Cooking up a Career

World-class chef Connie Crabtree founded the Culinary Arts Training Program with a $15,000 start-up grant from the Circle in 2005. Under the auspices of Baltimore Outreach Services and with a second $15,000 Circle grant in 2007, the pilot program has evolved into an eight-week program that trains unemployed women in the essential skills needed for working in a professional kitchen, including the job-keeping qualities of a professional: personal appearance, job vocabulary, discipline, ability to accept criticism, and self-confidence. Students learn the basic skills and terms needed for employment in a commercial kitchen at the level of beginning prep cook. The Sanitation and Food Safety Certification Program requirements are incorporated into the course, along with an off-site internship at local restaurants. The program’s goal is to give unemployed women the job skills to become self-sufficient. So far, about 35 have achieved this goal. Gwen J, who says “It took me until I was fifty to get my life together,” graduated from the first class and secured a full-time job, with benefits, as an assistant chef at a large retirement center. Her life is now stable and, for the first time, she is able to take care of herself and her daughter. “Every day when I go to my job…I say ‘Thank you God’…this is where I belong.”