The Youth Transitions Culinary Arts team won First Place in the Tennesee Division of the Hospitality Education Foundation of Georgia (HEFG), Prostart Competition on March 26, 2010. The team of three deaf students competed and learned with 18 other teams from Tennessee and Georgia. Being the only deaf team had several challenges, yet the team was prepared and learned much from the experience.
 ) ) ) ) |
)
)
)
)
Youth Transitions will host a Summer Culinary Arts Institute for youth with developmental disabilities ages 10-14. The goal of the Camp is to teach the campers to prepare basic meals for themselves and their families with minimal supervision. We will have four one-week camps in the month of June 2009. Daily activities encompass two hours. Each week will be dedicated to a specific disability.
Registration fee: $25.00 only
Week 1: Boys with Aspergers.
Week 2: Girls with Down Syndrome
Week 3: Youth with Physical disabilities
Week 4: Youth with Hearing impairments or Deaf.
Youth Transitions will host a Summer Culinary Arts Institute for youth with special needs ages 10-14. Your purchase of a dessert will help purchase supplies for the Summer Camp.
The goal of the Camp is to teach the campers to prepare basic meals for themselves and their families with minimal supervision. We will have four one-week camps in the month of June 2009. Daily activities encompass two hours classes.
Order delicious cakes for Thanksgiving online. Choose from the wide variety below:
Pumpkin Chess Pie w/ Praline Sauce
Absolutely the best pie you have ever tasted. Delicious pumpkin in a rich buttery custard. Praline sauce makes it a slice of heaven.
Sweet Potatoe Pie
Delicious Seasonal Sweet Potato Custard Pie. Shhh… This one is as good as Mama’s.
Pecan Pie
The holiday favorite. Made with fresh South Carolina pecans in a creamy nouget.
Chocolate Chess Pie
A Chocolate Lover’s Dream. Loads of intense chocolate flavor.
Apple Pie
The Taste of Fall. Seasonal Apples baked in a blanket crust, seasoned to perfection with cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter.
Italian Cream Cake
Toasted South Carolina Pecans and Coconut in a Layer Cake caressed in an Cream Cheese frosting.
Chocolate Layer Cake
A rich layer cake where coffee and sour cream meet. Finished with a decadent dark chocolate frosting.
Red Velvet Cake
A beautiful red cake underneath a heavenly blanket of cream cheese frosting.
Sweet Potato Cake
A layer cake with Fresh Grated Sweet Potatoes in warm spices covered in a Cream Cheese frosting laced with Essence of Orange.
Caramel Cake
Your favorite Yellow Cake under a Buttery Caramel Frosting. Just like you remembered.
Order you cake online here.
Youth Transitions will host a Summer Culinary Arts Institute for youth with special needs ages 10-14. Your purchase of a dessert will help purchase supplies for the Summer Camp.
The goal of the Camp is to teach the campers to prepare basic meals for themselves and their families with minimal supervision. We will have four one-week camps in the month of June 2009. Daily activities encompass two hours classes.
Choose from the wide variety below:
- Pumpkin Chess Pie w/ Praline Sauce
- Sweet Potatoe Pie
- Pecan Pie
- Chocolate Chess Pie
- Apple Pie
- Italian Cream Cake
- Chocolate Layer Cake
- Red Velvet Cake
- Sweet Potato Cake
- Caramel Cake
Order you cake online here.
Program helps students with special needs hone employable culinary skills
High school sophomore Frederick Johnson carefully sliced the zucchini, placing each plank on a pan ready for grilling.
“It’s fun. I like creating things,” Johnson said in sign language, admitting the grill is his favorite way to cook.
Johnson is one of five students from the Tennessee School for the Deaf who have been honing their culinary skills in hopes of landing a job in food service.
The training program, which started in August, is part of Youth Transitions, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping restaurants find qualified workers while getting disabled high school students employed.
“There’s a demand for employees. This is an untapped pool. They’re just not trained. So we know if we can train them at a high level, they can go to work,” said Chris Harper, Youth Transitions president and founder.
Students spend an hour and a half each day cooking in the kitchen at Calvary Baptist Church, 3200 Kingston Pike. And every Wednesday, the students prepare meals for about 300 churchgoers at Calvary and Bearden United Methodist.
On this day, the table has been set for a dinner of chicken marsala with grilled zucchini planks, Caesar salad, crostini and Italian cream cake.
The students prepared the entire meal, except for the cake, from scratch that morning.
Harper, who said he tries to stress the students out “to emulate what it is really like at a restaurant,” said the program, which is in its first year, has exceeded his expectations. The biggest challenge is pushing the clock to get it all done.
“Like right now, I’m the time keeper so I think in nine minutes we need to be ready. We won’t be ready. It’s just constantly thinking ahead, trying to stay ahead,” he said.
In the food service industry for 20 years including stints as a manager for Red Lobster and the Lunch Box, Harper said he was constantly trying to find good, trained employees.
Meanwhile, he said there are 70 percent of disabled Americans who can’t find a job while only 1 percent of students with a disability are employed.
“That’s a lot of folks not working,” he said. “If we can teach them three job functions then we know when we put them in a job they will be productive for that employer.”
Harper will also go into a restaurant, look at their operations and replicate it back at the church. That allows the students to become familiar with the restaurant or other food service provider.
Too often, he said, employers will say they would like to hire this person but they don’t have time to train them.
“I took that one statement and I built a program,” said Harper, who modeled Youth Transitions after a thesis he wrote in graduate school.
The organization gets some private local funding and some revenue from one of the churches it feeds.
This summer Harper will be launching a summer intern program that will provide children with summer employment. Harper already has two jobs lined up in Memphis. And in the fall, he plans to expand his program to at least three classes.
“We know we can do it with any population of kids with special needs,” he said. “They could have autism. They could have Down’s syndrome. It doesn’t matter. We understand how to do it. We’ve built a model that works.”
But employment is key “because that’s what we do.”
“We can say, ‘Yeah, they can really cook great. They do nice stuff.’ If we don’t get them employed, we’re just talking.”
(By Carly Harrington, KnoxNews.com)
Youth Transitions launches their new web site in March.
More great stuff is coming soon!