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Latest Review
Reviewed by: hannahb465
on 08/25/10:
Mission
DC Central Kitchen turns leftover food into millions of meals for thousands of at-risk individuals while offering nationally recognized culinary job training to adults overcoming homelessness, addiction, and incarceration. We use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.
Key Facts
Geographic areas served:
Washington, DC
Target demographics:
Our Meal Distribution program provides quality nutrition to 4,500 children, families, adults, and seniors each day. Recipients of our meals are clients of our 100 partner social service agencies, and thus represent a wide-cross section of our community, but all represent low-income and at-risk populations.
Our Culinary Job Training students are unemployed adults working to overcome histories of substance abuse, incarceration, and homelessness. Nearly all are DC residents and approximately 80% of each class identify themselves as African-American.
Our Healthy Returns program provides healthy meals and snacks, along with nutrition education, to low-income children in Washington, DC. Last year, 1,300 children benefited from Healthy Returns’ programming.
Our First Helping street-level outreach program serves chronically homeless men and women in DC—specifically in downtown’s Golden Triangle District and Wards 7 and 8 east of the Anacostia River. Notably, we are the only outreach service working east of the river.
Results to date:
Since opening our doors twenty-one years ago, we have:
• Served over 21 million meals—now in the amount of 4,500 each day—to our region’s hungry and homeless men, women, and children through our Food Recycling and Meal Distribution program.
• Graduated nearly 800 once-homeless and hungry men and women from our Culinary Job Training program. Since the economic crisis of 2008, our graduates have attained a 94% job placement rate and seen their starting average hourly salary increase over our earlier trainees.
• Engaged a daily average of 250 chronically homeless men and women through conversation and breakfast through our First Helping program, building relationships and connecting them with vital services.
• Recruited hundreds of thousands of volunteers for the fight against hunger. Last year, 14,000 individuals donated their time and talents to our organization.
• Replicated our model on the campuses of 26 colleges and high schools across America through our student-powered hunger relief program, The Campus Kitchens Project. Since 2001, CKP has recovered more than 1,000,000 pounds of food and served over 1,000,000 meals.
Direct beneficiaries per year: 10,000
With 3 hours a volunteer can:
DCCK volunteers have three meaningful ways to spend three hours. Most (some 10,000 people in 2009) join our morning meal production shift. Between 9 am and noon, these individuals will work alongside DCCK staff and culinary trainees to prepare 4,500 meals for hungry and at-risk members of the DC community.
But not everyone is a morning person. We also offer an evening shift from 5 to 8 pm when our volunteers slice and dice fresh local produce recovered from area farms. The finished products are bagged and sealed for use in future DCCK meal production.
Finally, volunteers can also join our First Helping street-level outreach team. Each morning, First Helping volunteers serve breakfast to chronically homeless individuals at 4 locations in DC, offering hot meals and warm conversation. Volunteers are supported by highly qualified outreach workers with extensive knowledge of the areas and individuals they serve. First Helping volunteers must be 18 or older.
To learn more, visit http://www.dccentralkitchen.org/volunteer. We would love to see you around the Kitchen.
Board Members and Affiliation:
Robert Egger, Founder and President
Marie Tibor, Chair, Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington
Jose Andres, Chair Emeritus, ThinkFoodGroup Inc
Lynne Breaux, Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington
Jim Burke, Sodexho USA
Josh Carin, Geppetto Catering
Gil Crawford, MicroVest Capital Management, LLC
Ken Crerar, The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers
Xavier Deshayes, Executive Chef- Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Paul Fields, Restaurant Development Services
Michael Freedman, Geiman, Rosenberg & Freedman
Tiffany Godbout, Hotel Association of Washington DC
Ryland Johnson, Zola Restaurant
David Kassir, Georgetown Private Cliente
LaShon Kell, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
Jodie L. Kelley, Fannie Mae
Rev. Ray Kemp, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University
Sam LeBlanc, Balancing Act
Ris Lacoste, Chef and Restaurateur
Chance Patterson, XM Satelitte Radio
Barton Seaver, Chef and Sustainability Consultant
Michael L. Stewart, DCCK CJT Program Graduate
Geoffrey Stricker, Clark Construction
Twanda Thomas, Martha’s Table, DCCK CJT Graduate
Rosetta Thurman, The Nonprofit Roundtable
Nancy Torray, Robert E. Torray and Anne P. Torray Family Foundation
Rob Wilder, Chair Emeritus, ThinkFoodGroup Inc.
Rhonda Willingham, MenzFit
Key Staff
Robert Egger, President and Founder
Michael Curtin, CEO
Rafael Chapman, Chief Financial Officer
Gregg Malsbary, Director of Programs and Revenue Generating
Brian MacNair, Chief Development Officer
Jerald Thomas, Director of Kitchen Operations
Marianne Ali, Director of Culinary Job Training Program
Jamie Schuman, Partner Relations Manager
Allison Sosna, Executive Chef of Fresh Start Catering and Contract Foods
Steve Robinson, Transportation Manager