Guest Blog from Volunteer Extraordinaire Jeff Mackevich

On my first day working as a volunteer at Curt’s Café, a non-profit training program for at-risk youth, I washed dishes for almost four hours.  I was hooked. 

The dish sink at Curt's is the nerve center of the Cafe. It's where I connected with the students. Everyone opens up and talks about anything and everything while they do the dishes. Plus the sink is between the kitchen and dining room so things are popping all around you the whole time. Needless to say it was a lot different than my job where I sit at a desk basically figuring out math and logic problems 24/7.

I consider myself to be very fortunate. I have been a financial advisor for over thirty years, and took advantage of an opportunity to take a six-month sabbatical. This is a common practice of educators and clergy, but rare for professionals. I'm a logical guy so before I started my sabbatical, I made two lists of activities to consider. The first was of things I had been doing my whole life that I wanted to do more of --competitive tennis, jazz saxophone performing and recording, working out, and anything else with my wife and three daughters.

The second list was made up of new things I wanted to add to my life. Other than reading more novels, taking Internet college courses, and sleeping more, I decided to volunteer somewhere to help minority youths. I got lucky. I wandered into my neighborhood's Curt's Cafe during my first week off, and the very next day I was working in the middle of the organized chaos of a restaurant, catering service, and social service agency.

I started to get to know the staff, students, and other volunteers, and they immediately accepted me into their community, which was different from anything I had ever experienced. For every job I did at the café I had a student partner in order to have as many “teachable moments” as possible. We could open up to each other while repairing a door, doing a catering delivery or just washing those dishes.

I quickly learned that Curt's is fueled by volunteers and community support. Susan Trieschmann, the founder and Executive Director, opened Curt’s (Cultivating Unique Restaurant Training) two years ago with her own hard work, experience, and money. She and her small staff and more than 25 volunteers train students in culinary technique, high school academics to pass the GED, life skills, and job readiness. Thirty-five youths have completed the program so far and all but a few are working at jobs around Evanston at places like Starbucks, Office Depot, Edzo's, and Northwestern University.

One of the things that was great about my role as volunteer is that my work at Curt’s changed every day. Susan would prepare lists of assignments for me. The students would see me jump into projects without being asked; especially if it meant helping someone else. This behavior becomes infectious. My tasks included washing dishes, food preparation, cooking, baking, repairing everything in sight, and packaging and delivering large catering orders. 

After my first month, it became apparent to me that Curt’s needed some financial controls and strategies. Together Susan and I computerized the revenues and accounts payable, installed a modern point of sale terminal, Streamlined food orders, eliminated bank fees, and reviewed the insurances.

There has been tremendous improvement in a short period of time, but we still have work to do in marketing, fundraising events, and grant writing.

The survival of any enterprise depends on the efforts of its people and its financial resources. Nonprofits need donations of peoples’ time and money, and Curt’s is no exception. The costs of opening and operating a restaurant are very high. Fixed costs including rent, utilities, salaries, and insurances are added to variable costs of daily food deliveries, ingredients, and packaging.  Curt’s also pays a daily student stipend and there is a separate fund to help students with other needs (like emergency housing, a new suit for an interview, or eyeglasses).

The most important characters in this story are the kids. They start by being welcomed into a loving and supportive environment. Of course they are expected to get up to speed with the program quickly. Rules are enforced like showing up on time ready to work and no distractions (like cell phones). Most of them start with no confidence and low self-esteem. They don’t speak clearly or make eye contact.

Some of these kids have had a very rough start. The nature of their crime is not important. The students realizes that they have been given a second chance, and it could be lost if they revert to old behaviors.

The most exciting part of Curt’s is watching each student grow in their confidence and abilities over the three months they are in the program. They can perform and manage every aspect of the café and have more poise and social skills. All of this effort is in preparation for job interviews. Hats off to all of the local employers who hire Curt’s’ kids fully aware of their criminal records.  A few weeks ago three students graduated from the program and got great jobs (Chef, construction, counter service, and a security guard). 

“Teaching moments” work both ways. I taught Curt’s kids about taking initiative, customer service, repairing anything, jazz, making bank deposits, basic accounting, and the stock market.They taught me about the harshness of their lives, frustration and anger, technology, rap, and more than I wanted to know about tattoos.

As a volunteer it was easy to see the need for support and untapped potential in our students, and understand why Susan was compelled to open Curt's Cafe. Her background is a very long and successful career in catering, first at the Pump Room in Chicago, and then the prestigious “Food for Thought” catering company. Susan was also one of the founders of Restorative Justice Evanston, a non-profit that “works with youth and community on peaceful dialogue around harm caused, celebrations, and conflicts.”

She had seen a pattern in kids getting arrested because they had nothing better to do. They had few resources and limited options available to them. After any confinement they had very little chance of landing a (entry level) job. Many of these kids end up living on the streets and return to destructive habits. Most of those released (82%) are back in the court system within a year.

This result is bad for everybody. It is more expensive for a taxpayer to incarcerate a youth than to send him or her to a private university. Susan explains “For our sake and theirs’ it makes sense to direct these young people toward a secure and productive future, where they can contribute to their community instead of undermining it. These young people all identify one essential thing that would help them turn their lives around: a job.”

That's where Curt's Cafe can help. I know because I've seen how it works and even though I an headed back to my day job and won't be doing dishes at Curt's I will stay connected to the organization. I'm leaving the sink but I'm joining the Board.

Giving Mom the Morning Off

Almost every Saturday morning since Curt's Cafe opened, Mike from the neighborhood, and his three over-the-top cute kids have been coming to the Cafe -- usually in their pajamas -- for breakfast!

Today, the week before Christmas, there is a special Daddy and Me breakfast., so Owen, 7, Riley, 4 and little Reese, who is 2 but insists she is 3 1/2, came in for a feast of chocolate chip pancakes, while their dad drank his Milky Way Latte. Every other week, the kids' standard fare is Coco Puffs, and there is a big box of the sweet stuff waiting behind the counter for them every time come in.

"We come to Curt's because it's not just kid friendly, it's everything friendly," says Mike. "We wake up on Saturdays and everyone just wants to go to Curt's!

A moment in the life of Susan our Executive Director

"I got a call at 11 p.m. last week from one of our students who asked if I could find some blankets for him. He is 20 years old and recently homeless – he said he had a bad fight with a sister and his mother had to “put him out” (sounds like what you do to a dog for a few hours, not a young man…but that is the terminology he used). When I asked how many he needed he said 8. I tried to go back to sleep but had to wonder why 8 young adults needed blankets to get trough the night.

At Curt’s Café we teach at-risk young adults aged 15 to 24 life and job skills and then place them in jobs and continue to mentor them. This summer we had 9 students and 6 were homeless. These were all young men, with no place to lay their heads, with little education, no jobs and no money. We are only able to provide two meals a day for them and 8 hours of training. But they have to survive the other 16 hours on the streets, and our gangs are clearly the ones opening their doors to them and keeping them safe and warm.

In Evanston we have adult homeless shelters and a few programs for homeless young adults, but the shelters specifically for young adults have long waiting lists. So what do they do at night when it's 32 degrees outside? Where do they go if they can’t afford a bus or train pass to run the rails all night and stay warm?

The volunteers at the Café found the student eight blankets within an hour and this morning at 6:30 a.m. I received a text from our student saying, “Thanks for everything."

8 blankets, that's easy. But they need so much more!"

It's All About The Soup!

We thought we had seen Justin smile before. 

He's been at Curt's for about a month now and he's posed for dozens of pictures for our Facebook page. He has even been interviewed by WGN News for a story they did on the Cafe. He was shown learning to cook up an omelet and then spoke directly into the camera and said that from the very first day he walked into Curt's it felt like home.

But yesterday we saw a look come across Justin's face that was a beautiful mixture of pride and joy during an exchange with a customer that caught Justin off guard. 

But let's back up. A few hours before Justin found himself standing at one of our tables talking to a lady eating a bowl of cream of broccoli soup, Justin was back in the kitchen next to a hot stove cooking up breakfast wraps, tuscan sandwiches and piping hot bowls of oatmeal.

We usually have a chef on hand to train our students, or Susan our Executive Director stands over the students' shoulder while they chop vegetables, make sandwiches and cook bacon. But on this morning the chef couldn't make it in, and Susan had her hands full preparing a big catering order that needed to get out the door. 

So Justin was our cook. He was manning the stove all by himself and responsible for preparing all the hot food for the Cafe. He had been working up to this point, spending many shifts working side by side with the cook. But today he was on his own, and all morning he was focused and efficient in his new position. 

But there's more to it. Another one of the cook's responsibilities was to prepare a soup for lunch, and Justin took this on as well. He made his own version of a cream-filled soup, chocked-full of vegetables and around noon he started to ladle out bowls of his creation as the orders came pouring in.

One of his bowls was delivered to a table of two gals busy chatting away. A few minutes later when one of our volunteers approached the table to see if the women needed anything else, she asked....

"So how is the soup?"

The customer's response was so immediate and so positive, it demanded grabbing Justin away from the kitchen for just a moment so he could hear the words coming out of her mouth. Justin approached the table awkwardly, and tentatively asked about the soup. And here's what that lady said, as she looked directly into Justin's eyes.

"This is the best bowl of soup I have ever had."

That's when Justin's mouth turned into a full on smile, a toothy grin with a genuine look of pride and joy, and a sense of accomplishment for a job well done!

Graduation Day for Vance

Our student Vance, the guy with dreadlocks behind the counter taking orders and making lattes all these months, has "graduated" and been placed in a job doing food service at Northwestern University. 

We gave Vance a send off recently with a cake and a tool box filled with lots of new tools. Vance hopes to do something mechanical one day and own his own business. We hope the tool box, and all the life tools he learned around Curt's Cafe, will give him a step up towards making his dream a reality. 

Vance was a hard worker and a natural leader and we all believe in him. So do his peers. On his final day at Curt's we all sat with Vance in a circle and the other students, social work volunteers and Susan took turns telling Vance what they admired about him. It really was touching to listen to the other students say they looked up to Vance and appreciated all the help he gave them when they were new at Curt's. 

When it was Vance's turn, he said that one of the things he learned at Curt's was to do things even if he didn't get something out of it -- going the extra step for the customer, teaching another student how to do something, keeping his cool with difficult customers. 

We are going to miss Vance, but he has promised to come back to the Cafe on Saturdays, his day off, once in a while, to continue to mentor other students.