Last month eleven people who were homeless, unemployed or underemployed stepped up to the podium at Carmichael Hall on the Medford campus to graduate from an eight-week program that not only taught them kitchen and job hunting skills, but also helped lay the groundwork for better lives.
At the same time, the program—Tufts Community Kitchen, developed in conjunction with the Somerville Homeless Coalition and Tufts Dining Services —taught Tufts University juniors Rachel Machta and Candice Montalvo, both Tisch Active Citizen Summer (ACS) Fellows, who managed the program, a lot about people they might not have otherwise met.
For three days each week, Machta and Montalvo taught for an hour and a half on food sanitation, personal hygiene and life skills, including personal budgeting, how to write resumes and cover letters and how to do job searches on the Internet. The other days they taught make-up courses and collected surplus food from area food pantries, including Fair Foods and Food for Free, for use in the program.
Machta and Montalvo also arranged for guest chefs to teach food preparation, kitchen management and related skills needed to work in and run an industrial kitchen. The class cooked food for 60 people, which was delivered to local shelters.
Patti Klos, director of Dining and Business Services at Tufts, and her assistant, George Cangiano, Jr., lent a huge hand by providing Carmichael Kitchen as a training facility.
Montalvo’s and Machta’s involvement with Tufts Community Kitchen started when they volunteered last year as case managers with National Student Partnerships, a student volunteer service organization that links people in need with resources and opportunities to become self-sufficient. The program, based at the offices of the Somerville Homeless Coalition, connected them with Coalition Executive Director Mark Alston-Follansbee, who worked with another Tisch ACS Fellow, Eleanor Heidkamp-Young, last year to launch the predecessor program. Heidkamp-Young started the initiative as her Sophomore year Citizenship & Public Service Scholar’s project.
Alston-Follansbee, whose organization has worked closely with Tufts since 1986, said, “I love this program because it educates students on campus to the real needs of people in the community. While 11 people graduated this summer, all 13 people who participated in the program learned something that can help them improve their lives.”
“To be honest, we didn’t know what we were getting into,” recounted Machta, a biology and community health major. “Every day we made lesson plans for the following day. Then we had the challenge of teaching to a very diverse group, which included many nationalities, a few who spoke little English, and several for whom English was a second language.”
But they rose to the challenge and, according to Machta, succeeded, as evidenced by the change in the students: “The improvement we saw in eight weeks was huge. On the first day of class, there were tensions between people from different shelters. On the last day people giving high-fives and hugging each other.”
Most importantly, she said, everyone felt comfortable in the class, noting that “Many hadn’t had many successes before.”
At the end of the eight weeks, everyone in the class had to take a final exam. It was a critical moment for many. The challenge, in part, was to create a meaningful exam that could be taken by people with different language abilities. Machta and Montalvo addressed the issue by giving oral exams to those who didn’t read English.
For many, the final exam was the best test score they had ever received. Recalled Machta, “They had tears when they got their test back. One woman who didn’t speak much English scored in the mid-70s and she was very pleased.”
Machta and Montalvo also learned from the experience.
“For me, a big thing was gaining the trust of the students. Also, getting to work with people who are actually homeless gave meaning and depth to what being homeless is. They are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met,” said Machta.
Montalvo, an international relations major who is studying in China for the fall semester, said, “I can't overstate how exciting it was to be a part of their success. This project also made me feel much more connected to the city of Somerville. There are so many other groups out there working to make this an amazing place to live, and that was inspiring to witness and be a part of.”
Originally published September 2007
