Helping rebuild your community could be as simple as going to a local café — in this case, the Kinship Café.
On a quiet Tuesday morning, the café staff offered a bright welcome to their guests as they trickled into the historic ThriveOn King building. Construction workers, office employees and eventually a hungry WUWM reporter stopped in to indulge in their selection of breakfast sandwiches, vegetarian burritos and fresh brewed coffee.
The café employs seven members of the Kinship Community Food Center Workforce Program. It’s an initiative intended to promote social cohesion and human development through food.
Amanda Fahrendorf is the senior communications associate for the Kinship Community Food Pantry.
“Everyone that’s in the workforce program comes from within our community," said Fahrendorf. "In Derrick’s example he started out as a volunteer, we have a few other folks that started out shopping or volunteering with us, and just because they’re already in our community, we already have a deep relationship with them, and we want to know 'Hey, can we walk with you further to see if we can help you achieve your goals, get employment skills, and other things like that.'”
The program started about two years ago, in 2022. Sixteen people have completed it since then. They do everything in the café: prepping, cooking, cleaning, and serving.
Fahrendorf explained that in Kinship's work with the workforce program members, healing is one of the main focuses in setting up people for success.
“We strongly believe as a community, that a lot of our folks that come through need to work through a lot of past wounds and trauma in order to be able to establish a new sense of stability and create new futures for themselves and make decisions for themselves going forward,” said Fahrendorf.
The workforce program connects participants with coaches who work with them to achieve goals that create a stable foundation. Therapists provide spaces for participants to work on their healing.
Derrick Noblin — the café worker Fahrendorf mentioned earlier — says he’s grown to appreciate the opportunities the workforce program has given him.
“It took me from really off the streets and everything, and stuff," said Noblin. "The position I was in really, I was jobless, no apartment to live, and you know they turned a lot of things around for me right now."
To Noblin, “turning things around” looked like this:
"I got a good job, got a nice apartment and everything. Any type of difficult problem that I have they there for me to help me resolve the problem, and everything they do the best they can for me, and I like that about them. And you know it ain’t just for me, it’s for anyone," he said.
The main goal of the café and workforce program is to provide skills that people need to maintain steady employment after the program. Noblin says he feels pretty confident in the tools the program has given him.
“When I do prepare to leave on my own, I want to make sure I have everything I need to move farther in my dreams and my goals and stuff," Noblin said. "And right now, they help me with that, they doing a lot for me, and I know I'm going to be set when I do decide to leave here.”
For the Kinship Café, the work is more than just food and coffee — it’s about rebuilding community and setting up members for future success.
