MDC: Fare Start
Great Foods, Better Lives
Event Date: March 17th
When was the organization founded? 1992
Mission: FareStart provides a community that transforms lives by empowering homeless and disadvantaged men, women, and families to achieve self-sufficiency through life skills, job training and employment in the food service industry.
Why are people passionate about your organization or cause? FareStart provides a solution to issues of homelessness, hunger, and poverty in our immediate Seattle community and beyond. Our job training programs are holistic; we provide culinary training, housing, counseling, life skills classes, and other support services. In addition, we use food as the tool to help individuals change their lives. Food is such an integral part of people’s lives and helps build community.
What were you able to accomplish in 2015? We had a record number of graduates, 203. Out of those 203, 91% got jobs within 90 days of graduation and 75% remained employed six months later with employers ranging from restaurants to caterers, supermarkets and hotels to retirement centers. An additional 139 individuals received training opportunities. Average starting wage increased 13% for adult graduates in 2015. Additionally, the students in our program played a key role in making and delivering 828,299 fresh, nutritious meals to our community's most vulnerable citizens. Of these, more than half were for our School Meals Program and delivered to low-income childcare centers and schools, Head Start and after-school programs. Through our Community Meals Program, we provided 359,351 meals to homeless shelters, health care facilities, transitional housing programs, hospice and respite centers. These were delivered 365 days of the year.
3 Fun Facts About Fare Start:
- Before FareStart became a nonprofit in 1992, it was “Common Meals” which was a job training program that served meals to local homeless shelters.
- David Lee, the founder of Common Meals, and later FareStart, is also the founder of “Field Roast” Grain Meat Company, the original maker of vegan grain meats.
- We have over 1300 volunteers that support our organization!
How can people get involved with your organization? Through volunteering, attending special events, and supporting our programs through dining at Guest Chef Nights on Thursday nights, or dining in our restaurant for lunch and cafes. All proceeds from our businesses go back into our training programs.
Website: www.farestart.org
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During the 2015 election cycle we had our membership nominate up to three different nonprofits for us to support throughout 2016. Due to the diversity of member nominated charities we designed a giving strategy that would allow us to support a large number of charities. This priority is where we came up with our Member Driven Community series. On the first and third Thursday of every month we will be featuring a different member nominated nonprofit at the brewery.
We will have charity staff or volunteers on site to educate people on the organization’s mission from 5pm to 9 pm during the event. For the entire day we will be donating $1 for every pint, schooner and growler purchased throughout the night. It’s an opportunity to learn about how great organizations are changing the world and raise some money and a beer.
