Mara Gordon | Teaching, one meal at a time

It was the best chicken sandwich I'd had in a long time.

I got it at a little cafe nestled along a nondescript block of Fairmount Avenue, kind of a hike for an ordinary weekday lunch after class this week.

But what made this one chicken sandwich so good was the people who made it.

The Back Home Cafe is an initiative of Project H.O.ME., a local organization that works to provide Philadelphia's homeless with four major services. Each is represented by a letter in the acronym: housing, opportunities for employment, medical care and education.

And the Back Home Cafe is a perfect example of how Philadelphia can use innovative programs to fight homelessness.

The restaurant is a self-described "delicious job initiative," a cozy spot that serves breakfast and lunch both to paying customers and residents of the H.O.M.E. shelter. The decor is bright and cheery; people sit and chat at the tables in the big front window.

The cafe had sandwiches, like the one I ordered, and all sorts of cookies and soups. On the day I stopped in, they had just catered a big luncheon for a city government office.

It's basically a gourmet restaurant - that happens to teach job skills to homeless adults looking to get back on their feet.

The restaurant employs about ten volunteers, who are living in the shelter, at any given time, according to Joyce Sacco, who manages the cafe and helps run Project H.O.M.E.'s employment initiatives.

There, formerly homeless adults can learn skills like food preparation and cashiering. When I stopped by on Monday, staffers were laughing and chatting as they mopped the floors and wrapped up leftover food.

But what makes the Back Home Cafe different is that training - not profit - is the first priority.

"Finding good, positive work at a livable wage . I think people are eager to get back on their feet," Sacco said as she showed me around the facility. "A lot of the people are apprehensive. Some of these folks have been on the street a long period of time."

Sacco has worked with homeless people in Philadelphia for years. The People's Emergency Center, a local shelter and outreach center, estimates that there are 25,000 homeless people in Philadelphia. Over half of that population consists of families.

Homelessness is a chronic problem here, one so vast it's tempting to ignore. It just seems a lot easier, sometimes, to keep on walking past the men and women living on the cold sidewalks of our city.

But there's just something about the Back Home Cafe that tackles these same problems with a fresh attitude.

Working there "takes a certain type of person," Sacco said. As the cafe is open to the public, staff members have to be serious about the restaurant and dedicated to working there.

The cafe is not financially self-sufficient - they depend on grants and donations to keep things running. Employees, however, are expected to treat their jobs like paying ones at for-profit restaurants.

That's what separates the Cafe from many shelters. Other organizations all over the city, of course, do great work for Philadelphia's homeless people, offering hot meals and a place to sleep to our most vulnerable neighbors. Yet homelessness still persists.

The Back Home Cafe, on the other hand, is all about helping others help themselves. It offers homeless people a safe, welcoming community from which they can learn self-sufficiency and real-world skills. Those values are key to combating a problem as complex as this one.

That's why so many of the city's nonprofits could learn a thing or two from the Cafe's attitude.

When I visited this week, I spoke with one woman named Danielle, a former cafe employee who worked the cash register and helped prepare food.

She came to the shelter at Project H.O.M.E. after years of substance abuse and living on the street - but thanks to the cafe, she's turning her life around.

"It's a loving and caring atmosphere," Danielle told me as she sipped her Green Mountain Coffee, a trendy eco-friendly brand from Vermont. "We joke around when we ain't got no customers."

She's getting ready to have a baby next year, but Danielle said she was planning on getting a new job as soon as she could.

And when I asked her to sum up her experience there?

"I like it," she said.

Then, she reconsidered. "I love it."

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, D.C. Her e-mail address is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Thursdays.

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