By Erin Cohn, Edit Intern, November 2018
In a city where good cooking reigns supreme, knowing your way around a kitchen is a must.
No one knows this better than Luis Arocha, Jr., executive director of Café Hope. After recognizing a need within the Westbank community, Café Hope was founded in 2010 with the goal of providing an accessible culinary skills program to disadvantaged youth ages 17-24.
Café Hope is a nonprofit restaurant that relies on Catholic charities, fundraisers and corporate sponsors, in addition to restaurant and catering proceeds to sustain the educational program. Luis likes to refer to the venture as social-entrepreneurship, as they are indeed entrepreneurs, but focused on social equity and community engagement rather than simply turning a profit.
Even while acknowledging that financing a nonprofit can be a struggle, Luis says, “Café Hope has been successful since it opened its doors in that it instantly began helping kids.”
All About Serving Hope
The Café Hope curriculum, which requires no financial contribution from the students, is a 16-week program geared towards a holistic education. Students will spend the first four weeks in “Seeds to Success” during which they will not set foot in a kitchen or dining room and instead work on professional development.
“Seeds to Success” focuses on the students as human beings and catalyzes self-reflection by asking students to consider what they have been through and what goals they want to achieve in the future.
Additionally, students work with various community partners to further develop themselves, like churches to aid spirituality or the Gulf Coast Bank which teaches financial literacy. Students of Café Hope will also have the opportunity to get ServSafe certification, with a current pass-rate of 98%. The next six weeks of the program are spent learning hands-on in the kitchen with Café Hope’s three chefs, who boast a combined 60+ years of experience. The last six weeks are then focused on hospitality and customer service in the dining room.
Impact On The Community
Since opening, Café Hope’s small but dedicated staff have worked tirelessly to graduate 250 kids, and their work doesn’t end there. Café Hope strives to place alumni in careers within six weeks of graduation, and they have done so for an astounding 72% of students.
Café Hope credits the New Orleans restaurant community, particularly smaller restaurants, with being incredibly welcoming and willing to give its graduates a chance.
One young man who graduated in the second year of the program has been working on Natchez for nine years and is now second-in-command. The success of Café Hope’s graduates speaks to the importance of the program. In reminiscing on past students, Luis noted how some adults may have written these kids off, wrongly assuming that their struggles were through their own designs. Luis believes instead that, “They just need a support system, a little encouragement that they can do it. They all want to be independent, want to make their own way…they just need someone to care a little and love a little.”