Food Jobs Work is a 6-week culinary workforce development training program, in partnership with Arkansas Food Jobs, UA-Pulaski Technical College Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute, Our House and Rock City Reentry. Since 2017, we’ve taught our students the basics: sauté, knife skills, food safety, sauces and more. But beyond that, we’ve taught them to believe in themselves, which is something that will take them far beyond what a job alone will do. Our students come to us because they have experienced some sort of monumental struggle in their lives. This could be underemployment, trauma, and frequently, a brush with the corrections system. The main goal of our program is to reach into these students’ lives and give them hope, through both a marketable skill set and a set of mentors and counselors who will go to bat for them every step of the way. Over the course of six weeks, our students meet on the campus of Our House shelter in Little Rock. In the mornings, they meet in the shelter’s commercial kitchen for their culinary school-style training. Often, the food created by the students is served to shelter residents and staff. In the afternoons, the students meet in the shelter’s Career Center, where they learn the textbook side of culinary arts, as well as soft skills determined by the U.S. Department of Labor for success in foodservice. There is also an emphasis on the soft skills needed to be a productive and successful employee, using a trauma-informed curriculum. We are Arkansas’ first and only member of Catalyst Kitchens, a national network of culinary teaching kitchens for at-risk audiences.