Food & Drink PEOPLE
MAKE Café isn’t only a restaurant. It’s a workforce program for refugee and immigrant women who, in many cases, have never been employed. The program lasts three months, during which participants receive minimum wage while learning skills that will help build the confidence and experience to move on to other employment. “We want to give them a first job,” says Anchi Mei, executive director of MAKE Projects. “So they can get a better second job and, ultimately, find a career path.” At the end of the program, employment advisors hold mock interviews, edit resumes, and help participants plot out education plans and career goals. “If someone becomes a housekeeper, we want to help chart the path for them to become a [supervising] housekeeper,” says Samantha Forusz, the deputy director of MAKE Projects. MAKE even prepares participants for the grueling minutiae of onboarding. “We want them to succeed, so just like everyone else, they go through the painful processes of HR the first day,” Mei says. “W4s, I-9s, the Gusto app.” “At the end of the day, this is the community and culture we are cultivating in San Diego and what our menu represents—it is globally inspired, locally sourced .” For immigrant and refugee women, this training is especially important because many are isolated by language barriers and come from agrarian backgrounds where they lacked access to formal education. Often, they are single moms trying to stay afloat after their partners were injured or killed in global conflicts. Nimo Omar Ali is a 36-year-old mother of eight from Somalia who is married to an Uber driver. Her new income makes it possible for her family to pay rent. “It’s [also] how we feed our family and buy school supplies,” she says. After her 12-week stint at MAKE, where she has continued ESL classes, her dream is to land a job at a school cafeteria. “I love cooking,” she adds. While MAKE doesn’t expect participants to stay in food service, they have found that making and serving food is the perfect gateway to enter the work world. “It’s a hard life,” Mei says of being a low-income immigrant. “So to be able to create joy and give joy so easily and contribute so artfully, that’s the beauty of food as a platform for us.” Sokyum Ou, a former participant from Cambodia, concocted the orange syrup served atop the pancakes, a mainstay of the menu. (Ou now works at Seneca in the Intercontinental Hotel downtown.) “So you have traditional buttermilk pancakes
TOP MAKE Projects’ farm stand vends infused oils, vinegars, and cocktail syrups made with herbs from their garden. ABOVE Seedlings fill every inch of the organization’s makeshift greenhouse. OPPOSITE PAGE On a table at MAKE sits a beautiful brunch rich with all the colors befitting a globally inspired, locally sourced menu.
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NOVEMBER 2023
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