Jen Flanagan is founder and executive director of Community Kitchen Pittsburgh, an employment-based social enterprise that empowers people through food service training and life skills mentoring. With an impressive 93% placement rate in professional kitchens for those who complete their training programs, she and her team are giving brighter futures to hundreds who find themselves struggling to overcome systemic barriers at the margins of society.
After witnessing the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in NYC from her publishing company office window, Jen felt a change inside. "After 9/11, I decided I wanted to do something more with community service," she said. "I just wanted to change my trajectory."
When an AmeriCorps VISTA program placement brought her to Pittsburgh, she soon realized the intersection of two of the most persistent issues our country is facing – food insecurity and access to living wage jobs – provided enormous potential to do good.
She launched Community Kitchen Pittsburgh – an affiliate of Catalyst Kitchens, a national system of non-profit teaching kitchens – in 2013 with an aim of addressing both the need for training and judgment-free life skills guidance.
“For us, you can’t separate joblessness and hunger. They go hand in hand,” she tells host Chris DeCardy, president of The Heinz Endowments. “We work with employers that pay good wages, provide benefits and treat our people well.”
The organization’s wholistic approach is working. It prepares and serves 450,00 meals each year for those experiencing food insecurity, and formerly incarcerated individuals who complete their free-of-charge,12-week training program have a recidivism rate of just 5% – a full 15% lower than the national average.
With an estimated 13% of individuals nationwide – and 21% in the Pittsburgh region - experiencing food insecurity, Jen and her team’s successes at the intersection of hunger and workforce development are a welcome stream of light.
“We Can Be” is hosted by Heinz Endowments President Chris DeCardy, and produced by the Endowments, Josh Franzos and Tim Murray. Theme music by Josh Slifkin. Guest inquiries may be made to Scott Roller at sroller@heinz.org
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