Café Momentum provides a restaurant establishment that changes lives by empowering highly at risk youth who are interested in a culinary career. We help this undeserved portion of our community achieve self-sufficiency through life skills, job training and employment in the food service industry. Until we raise the funds needed to open the restaurant Cafe' Momentum is available as a monthly pop-up restaurant. You can make reservations by going to :      http://www.cafemomentum.org/

   Phil Willis, VP Operations for the CHG at     Chef Randal Copeland from Restaurant AVA

   Cityplace gives the students 2 hours of       in Rockwall Texas teaches the fine

   training prior to each pop-up dinner.         of sugar dusting the fried peach pies.

Parigi co-owners Janice Provost and Chad Houser along with Youth Village Resources of Dallas (YVRD) are creating a new nonprofit restaurant concept called Café Momentum. Café Momentum is a non-profit restaurant that will serve as a culinary training facility for high-risk youth. Our primary focus is on the Dallas County Youth Village, a juvenile residential facility for young men who are 13-17 years of age. Café Momentum is set up as a social enterprise program of YVRD. Young men choose this internship-style program knowing that this may be their last chance to control their own future. They are eligible for this program only after completing a culinary training program at the Dallas County Juvenile Facility. At Café Momentum, they will rotate through each aspect of the restaurant business, from waiting tables, preparing food, to washing dishes. Each month, a different guest chef will volunteer his/her time, talent and a few recipes. In addition to gaining marketable work experience under established chefs, the staff will be able to leave Café Momentum with a strong list of employment contacts and references.

To create opportunities for these teens to work with real chefs prior to the restaurant opening, and to raise awareness and money for the restaurant, Provost and Houser and YVRD have launched a monthly pop-up dinner series starring guest chefs from the Dallas area. Prior to working each pop-up dinner the young men get valuable service training from volunteers from the Conference Hospitality Group at Cityplace. The pop-up dinners are selling out, raising funds for the restaurant and the young men are getting jobs as a result of working them.

Central to the work of Cafe' Momentum is to introduce young men to activities and learning opportunities that they are unlikely to encounter in their lives without this experience and provide them a tangible path away from the justice system. We want these young men to have a legal source of income that is attainable based on the skills and relationships they get from Cafe' Momentum. These young men are paid well for the work they do currently at the pop-up dinners. They leave with a check and a list of references.