Welcome to the start of something amazing for Orange County's reentry community!
We are developing Mamey Mami, a Miami-themed food truck that will offer ten-month apprenticeships to formerly-incarcerated people who want to work in food and other hospitality sectors. And we need your help to get our truck.
The issue
My name is Christopher Reeve, and I'm an educator and storyteller from Miami, Florida and the Bronx, New York. I've been in Orange County since 2016. In New York City, I was a high school special education teacher and department coordinator in the country’s poorest congressional district. I noticed that after graduation, my students who had been arrested had difficulty getting jobs. Where I lived, I noticed a similar trend of highly-capable men who had criminal records surviving outside of formal employment, sometimes experiencing rearrest. After working in education full-time, I worked as a journalist. It was during a stint in which I wrote on poverty and inequality for Univision that I saw, as I had while earning a master’s degree in education, the well-documented relationship between being poor in the United States and experiencing the criminal justice system.
There is a lot of talent going to waste.
Importance of jobs
After I relocated to Southern California, I joined the employment committee of the Orange County Reentry Partnership (OCREP), a group of organizations that support people on parole as they reenter their communities. “Welcome home” is how we greet people recently released from prison. Gainful employment is a key factor for reentry success. Michelle Alexander, law professor and author of The New Jim Crow, writes, "Finding a job allows a person to establish a positive role in the community, develop a healthy self-image, and keep a distance from negative influences and opportunities for illegal behavior." Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles-based organization that offers services to former gang members, puts it another way: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” Jobs can help keep people from getting into trouble and ending up in prison—or back in prison.
The cost of incarceration
Incarceration is expensive. California spends about $75,000 per inmate per year. That money can be used for other things, like technology in schools, road repairs, public transportation, and recreational facilities. When people leave prison, we should support them so that they don’t return. In Orange County, out of every ten people released, four end up back in prison within three years.
The social enterprise
When I got involved with OCREP, I was already developing a mobile café that would allow me to serve Cuban coffee and some of my grandmother’s mouth-watering Cuban recipes. Why not turn the venture into a social enterprise? Mamey Mami was born. We would use the fully-functional food truck to offer ten-month apprenticeships to formerly-incarcerated men and women. The program would have a rigorous training component in culinary arts, business skills, and customer service. Graduates of the program would have relevant training and continuous work experience to facilitate long-term employment.
The wheels started turning. My colleagues at OCREP started to connect me with members of their organizations and networks. We reached out to parolee education programs with culinary modules as potential sources for Mamey Mami apprentices. We connected with L.A. Kitchen, which has a well-developed social enterprise. That organization provided us with their food training curriculum. AnneMarie Farris started working on the logo. James and Jennifer Covello, of South Beach Cuisine and Espresso in Tacoma, are selling us the perfect truck. Other individuals and organizations have mobilized to support Mamey Mami. And you can too.
Support our work
We need our truck. The Covellos are selling us a truck that is equipped for Miami cuisine, and they are selling it for tens of thousands of dollars less than quotes manufacturers gave me. I paid $10,000 to secure the truck, and need your help to pay the balance of $55,000. Consider making a donation to get us one step closer to getting our truck and launching our social enterprise that will offer employment and training opportunities to formerly-incarcerated men and women in Orange County. Through our social enterprise, we will support our participants in their reentry journey. Help us create an experience in which our participants can shine, that allows families to remain whole, and sees neighborhoods flourish as their sons and daughters successfully come home.
Help us make Mamey Mami a reality.