Baltimore Womens’s Giving Circle

The Circle’s latest grant to the Caroline Center, earmarked for the Culinary Arts Training Program, helped launch a new career for Ashanti and eight others in her graduating class.

“There’s a warmth and feel that you don’t get from the larger foundations.”

Recipe for Success

Graduation Day proved doubly lucky for Ashanti last April, when she completed course work and earned her ServeSafe certificate at Caroline Center’s Culinary Arts Training Program. As she and her family were celebrating her success at Cactus Willie’s, a restaurant on Eastern Avenue, the manager, hearing her good news, offered her a job on the spot. Since then, Ashanti has not only continued working as a cook there—and progressing towards her goals of buying a house and car, and starting her own catering business—she’s gotten a couple of her friends hired, too. “If I put my mind to it, I can do anything,” Ashanti told her career counselor at the Center. “I can complete anything.”

The April 2008 graduating class included eight other women, ages 24 to 45, as well as Ashanti, a mother of seven at age 34. Enrolled in the Center’s nursing assistant program in 2002, Ashanti returned to the Center after six years punctuated with heavy loss, including her husband’s death from leukemia, jail time, and the removal of four children to foster care. This time she needed training in a career that wouldn’t disqualify her because she had a criminal background. Thus she embarked on a hands-on cooking course, taught in the basement of the Church of the Messiah, and plugged into the wrap-around services offered at the Center: life skills, individual counseling, financial literacy, math, communication skills, and computer literacy. She, along with the other graduates, emerged ready for a new career.

“We have a connection with Obryki’s,” explains Sister Pat McLaughlin, Executive Director of the Center, for post graduate placement, “as well as Loyola College and Charlestown.” The Center typically encourages graduates to look for work in the food service industry versus a restaurant, she says, since food service jobs typically include salaries and benefits instead of an hourly wage. Another leg up the Center provides is the requirement that participants earn a ServeSafe certificate, a national certification concerned with food safety and handling for people in the food service industry. “Every commercial kitchen needs at least one person on staff who is ServeSafe certified,” explains Sister Pat. “This gives our students an edge.”

“The thing that I appreciate about all of you is your personal approach,” Sister Pat says about working with the Baltimore Women’s Giving Circle. “There’s a warmth and feel about it that you don’t get from the larger foundations. We know how it comes to us, from individuals; you make your decisions thoughtfully and carefully. Your interest and support means almost as much as the money,” she continues, adding with a laugh, “Almost.”