St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore awarded $600,000 Johns Hopkins Innovation Fund Grant

Funding Will Support Job Training for Opportunity Youth

St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore (SVDP) is the recipient of a $600,000 grant awarded by the Johns Hopkins Innovation Fund for Community Safety to support occupational skills training in food service for Opportunity Youth in Baltimore City. SVDP’s project was one of just nine out of 75 project applications chosen by the selection committee formed by the Daniels and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The three-year grant will fund job training services at Good Harvest Community Kitchen, a social enterprise of SVDP. The Good Harvest Food Service Training is an intensive, 12 week program providing both classroom instruction and hands-on production kitchen experience, case management, job placement, and post-employment support. This grant will allow the program to focus on serving Opportunity Youth at high risk of being a victim or perpetrator of violence as part of an effort to help them stay safe and succeed through career employment.

Good Harvest will leverage its ten years of food service occupational skills training experience to provide employment training leading towards living wage employment. The goal of the program is to help targeted youth gain skills to begin a career path in the food service industry, reducing the risk of program recipients in becoming a victim or perpetrator of violence.

“Good Harvest has been a leader over the past decade in offering food service training to individuals with barriers to employment, and we are excited to shift the program to focus on serving this high-need population. These services will not only provide a career path for the youth served, but also contribute to greater community safety for everyone.” said John Schiavone, President & CEO of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore.

The Good Harvest training program will serve low-to-no income youth ages 18-24 who are disconnected from school and work, with a focus on youth from the Charles Village, Mt. Vernon, and East Baltimore areas of Baltimore City. The program will help students build job readiness and employability skills, gain an occupational and technical skill set in food service, and earn industry accepted ServSafe Food Safety Certifications. Students selected for the program will pay no tuition or fees, and receive a weekly stipend while in the program.

To learn more about Good Harvest Community Kitchen, visit www.goodharvest.org