The Berkeley Voice
April 18, 2003
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The Bread Project teaches skills to make dough
By Michal Lando
Staff writer
A year ago, when Virginia Berry was doing time in the Redwood City Women's Facility for a series of wrong turns, an opportunity to learn how to bake presented itself.
She jumped at the chance. The correctional facility announced it was offering two $5,000 scholarships for a course in baking led by the Bread Project, a nonprofit group that teaches low-income people baking skills they can use to re-enter the work force.
"I was tired of messing up, I wanted to be somebody," Berry said. "The Bread Project really, really did something for me."
A year after graduating from the program, Berry is holding down a full-time job at Whole Foods and has turned her life around.
The Bread Project was founded by Lucie Buchbinder and Susan Phillips in May 2000. They have run seven sessions in South San Francisco. This week, their first session in Berkeley begins. Classes run four days a week for nine weeks.
The group's mission is to help disadvantaged and low-income people become self-sufficient. Students learn to bake bread, pastries and cakes, and they learn job-readiness skills. The class also includes job-placement services.
"The goal is to teach low-income people the baking trade and to raise their self-esteem and employability," Buchbinder said. "I feel we have really saved some lives."
The Bread Project has received awards from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Alameda County Social Services and Sustainable San Mateo County.
Graduates have been hired around the Bay Area, at Albertsons, Andronico's, The Bread Garden, Boogie Woogie Bagel, Colombo, Great Harvest Bakery, Metropolis Bakery, Krispy Kreme, Safeway and Toot Sweets.
After years in the subsidized housing industry, Buchbinder and Phillips found huge demand for job training. But options are scarce for low-income people.
Research pinpointed baking as the ideal trade to train people in. It requires only short-term training and limited English and offers an entrée into a growing industry with good entry-level wages and possibilities for advancement.
The Bread Project opened in July 2001 in South San Francisco in collaboration with the S.F. Baking Institute.
"They offered to give us their training at cost and we've been there ever since," Buchbinder said.
It costs roughly $182,000 per year to run the program in San Francisco and will run an additional $30,000 a year to add classes in Berkeley.
Funding comes from Cisco Systems and Wells Fargo Bank, the Soda Foundation, the Haas Foundation and individual donors. The Berkeley Adult School, where the class is being held, is paying for the teachers and using the kitchen is free.
The figures speak for themselves. Over 90 percent of participants graduate, and 80 percent of those find jobs. A year later, 70 percent of the employed graduates are still in the work force.
Clients include at-risk youths, immigrants with limited English, recovering substance abusers, veterans, incarcerated people and people on probation. Students have included African-Americans, Caucasians, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders and immigrants from Mexico, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Greece.
For LeDell Jones, a student in the class who is currently serving time in the Alameda County Jail work-release program, the baking class will mean a big career change. Jones grew up in Oakland, without a stable career base or job environment.
"This program will give me the chance to get certified in cooking," Jones said. "Cooking was always around the house with the mothers, but now I will become one of those great cooks and my son will look up to me."
The Bread Project has developed a good relationship with the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, said Buchbinder. The project gets some of its best students on referral from the department, she said.
"They are eager to shine and do well because they know that if they don't they will make it harder for the program," Buchbinder said.
Fred Rutledge, principal of a Department of Corrections educational program that contracts with the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, said the program has been "absolutely stupendous."
"Inmates have to learn how to operate in society and the business world, which means learning promptness and responsibility," Rutledge said. "The payback is a good salary and skill. Some get the clue and learn that they can gain their self-respect."
According to Rutledge, the education program tries to reach out to many community organizations to help keep inmates "out of the communities that got them (into jail) in the first place."
Ruth Castaneda, a recent immigrant from Mexico, has a master's degree in research and education. But because of language barriers, she too has enrolled in the class.
"My family had the idea to start a business in the food industry," she said. Her family is planning to start the business at home, which is one of the benefits of baking.
"It's an easy business to start at home: All you need is a mixer and an oven," Buchbinder said.
But demand is much greater than what the program can offer, according to Buchbinder.
"All levels of government should be doing much more," she said. "There is no doubt we would be saving lives all over the place if there were more job development programs."
Buchbinder is not a stranger to hard times herself. Born in Austria, she was a World War II refugee.
She and her family immigrated to the U.S. in 1939 after her father was saved from a concentration camp. "When I lived in suburbia, I realized it was all white, and I helped to establish housing groups around the Bay Area," Buchbinder said. "But I realized it was not just racial but an economic problem."
Buchbinder found her calling in 1965, when a poverty program was started in Hayward, where she lived at the time. The director asked her to write a housing proposal.
"After that I was hooked on doing housing for low-income people," Buchbinder said. "It was a chance to really give back to the community."