Family Gateway Center in Dallas offers new food service training program for homeless

by Stan Ascher

DALLAS — The Family Gateway Center in Dallas, a homeless shelter for Dallas County families with children under 17 years old, has launched a new two-part training program to help homeless people get jobs in the food service industry.

It's part of their Gateway to Jobs program, which offers job readiness classes and job search assistance to adults. It runs for 12 weeks and is offered in conjunction with El Centro College, where students learn how to work in a commercial kitchen.

"This is the first training kitchen of its kind in Dallas and we're excited," says Kelly Harris, Executive Director of the Family Gateway Center. The kitchen was refurbished with time and money donated from dozens of individuals and vendors

"We realized that hotels, hospitals, and restaurants need qualified help (so) we went out and got donations to turn our kitchen in a training kitchen," Harris says.

The program is broken into two parts. During the first six weeks, students work in the training kitchen. El Centro Chef Paul Philtat teaches classes such as knife handling skills and provides the opportunity for the students to earn kitchen sanitation and food handler certifications.

During the second part of the program, students try out their skills in the real world: They spend their time in paid internships at member businesses of the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association.

"This will give them a true workforce experience and hopefully lead to a job," says Sharon Van Meter, executive director at the Milestone Culinary Institute, who helped develop the program. "If we can empower the homeless with education, then we are nine-tenths of the way there," she says.

It costs the Family Gateway Center $1100 per student to pay for the instructor and food. Harris says the costs are being covered by a federal financial aid program that the staff at El Centro found.

"El Centro hopes that they will develop a interest and enter the culinary training program to become a chef," Van Meter says.

Stan Ascher is an intern from the University of North Texas