Kent’s Project Feast culinary skills training program for immigrants and refugees will receive a $10,000 grant from the Rhode Island-based Jacques Pépin Foundation.
The foundation supports community kitchens that offer free life skills and culinary training to adults with high barriers to employment, including previous incarceration, homelessness, substance abuse issues, low skill and education attainment and lack of work history.
Project Feast, 202 W. Gowe St. in downtown Kent, is a nonprofit that runs training programs for English Language Learners who have little to no prior work experience in the food industry in the United States.
Pépin, 88, is a French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality and artist.
Project Feast is one of eight recipients for summer grants, according to a July 11 press release from the foundation. Project Feast empowers refugee and immigrant cooks through hands-on culinary training and education.
The nonprofit’s Culinary Skills Apprentice Program combines classroom, kitchen, and ESL lessons to prepare their apprentices for jobs in food businesses, or to start their own, with the opportunity to test their concepts at Ubuntu Street Café.
In addition to the $10,000 grant, Project Feast will receive JPF branded aprons for their students and a group membership to the foundation.
Founded in 2016 by the Pépin family, the foundation strives to enrich lives and strengthen communities through the power of culinary education.
“The JPF’s mission is realized in part by supporting programs that create opportunities through culinary training, and giving grants to these important, impressive, local organizations,” said Rollie Wesen, executive director of the JPF. “Project Feast offers business incubation support for alumni at their Ubuntu Street Café and cultivates an inclusive, equitable culture for the immigrants and refugee communities they serve. Over 25% of their graduates have launched their own food businesses. We’re proud to support this impressive program and provide tools they need to empower those with barriers to employment.”
Van Nguyen, executive director of Project Feast, thanked the foundation for the grant.
“It is an amazing honor to receive this award and recognition from the Jacques Pépin Foundation,” Nguyen said. “Chef Pépin’s personal experience and zeal for cooking provides inspiration for our immigrant and refugee students, a new community of kitchen apprentices working to turn their love of cooking into a career. We thank them for supporting our work.”
According to its website, immigrants and refugees trained at Project Feast since 2013 have come from numerous countries, including Afghanistan, Central African Republic, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, India, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine and Vietnam.
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