Employment Programs    Meal Service Programs    Community Kitchen

 Recipes For Success    Community Partnerships    Donations    Funders

In a neighbourhood known for it's challenges, Potluck is proud to be a positive social enterprise that is actively participating in the revitalization of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Potluck´s social impact has been enormous, with our business revenues providing more than 150,000 meals to those in need since the Café opened in 2002.

We are excited to be meeting our goals of working in our own neighbourhood to provide affordable, nutritious meals while at the same time offering continuous, stable employment and training to 10 downtown eastside residents.

The Potluck Café Society´s Training Employment program prepares Downtown Eastside residents for long-term employment in the restaurant and catering industry. The program not only teaches necessary vocational skills, it also provides its trainees with mentorship and peer support. Potluck´s trainees are often faced with many significant challenges. By maintaining a high ratio of skilled staff to multi-barriered staff, Potluck is able to offer its trainees specialized focus and individualized training.

In the initial training phase, Potluck trainees focus on learning work based skills. These skills include meal preparation, serving, and hosting. In addition, trainees learn the necessary life skills for adequate functioning in daily life and in the workforce.

In the next phase of training, the focus is more on professional development. Under the direction of Potluck´s Executive Chef John Perry, trainees are encouraged to broaden their knowledge base and take on more responsibility in the café. Trainees are assigned tasks appropriate to their abilities and take on new tasks when they are ready to learn. Every effort is made to ensure that trainees have the transferable skills to seek employment elsewhere and the necessary life skills to participate in all aspects of the labour

 

Potluck´s subsidized meal program makes regular nutritious meals accessible to residents of the Downtown Eastside. A majority of those who use the service have tested positive for HIV, have Hepatitis C and have accessed food line-ups due to their physical and mental condition.

Since we began in April 2001, nutritionists have documented significant improvements in weight and quantitative health among DTES residents. In the near future we plan to expand our meal service in order to help others in our community. Some initiatives that we are working on include community kitchens, tailored meal services, meals on wheels, and developing a resident food committee.

Two and a half years ago, Potluck went through a Strategic Planning process that looked at the needs of the DTES residents, specifically related to nutrition and employment. In regards to their nutritional development, Potluck determined to provide residents with a continuum of food related supports that would help them learn about topics such as food safety, Universal Precautions, and basic nutrition on a budget, as well as simple food preparation. The idea was to provide them with the tools to care for their own nutritional needs. One of the strategies along the continuum was a Resident Community Kitchen.

With the help of a number of dedicated volunteers from a group called Neighbour Link, the Potluck Community Kitchen is now underway. It is open to all Downtown Eastside residents and the response rate has been overwhelming.

The Community Kitchen takes place every second week, and with the help of a volunteer nutritionist and a Chef, the program runs in an educational format, providing guidance on food values and safety, as well as simple food preparation and cooking techniques.

The goal of this program is to provide residents the opportunity to learn, while enjoying a normalized social experience - the opportunity to prepare and enjoy a meal amongst a group of friends, in an atmosphere of respect.

  

With the generous support of the Vancouver Foundation and the Vancity Community Foundation, Potluck launched a project aptly entitled ‘Potluck Recipes for Success’.  Our focus is to share the learnings, practical strategies and best practices used by Potluck and others to successfully train and employ people with multiple barriers to employment. The project identifies those issues that affect employees with barriers and the employers who hire those employees, and seeks to share the lessons learned and educate others. In doing so, our goal is to increase both the numbers of employees with barriers who are hired and more importantly the number who retain successful employment. Similarly, by sharing practical tools and resources, we hope to increase the number of employers who are committed to hiring and retaining individuals with barriers.

Potluck is fortunate to partner with outstanding organizations that have also demonstrated success in training and employing people with barriers. Organizations that have shared their wisdom and practical insights with us include The Cleaning Solution, Starworks, Atira, and Mills Basics among many others. We are also grateful for the insights shared by the many employees who have benefited from the training and employment programs offered by these enlightened and progressive organizations.

We continue to pool practical insights and recipes for success into tools and resources for use by both Employees and Employers. We encourage you to browse and download information from our growing recipe box below:

Employer Tools       Click on a Link to Download…

Hiring Employees With Barriers	Mental Health Diagonsis
Employee Fears	Negative Employee
Employee Anger	Substance Abuse
Methadone & Harm Reduction	Understanding The Addictions Process
How Emotions Affect Employees	Power Imbalance
Giving Feedback	Understanding The Change Process
Efficiency and Cost Considerations in Hiring	Alcohol Drug Use Checklist

Employee Tools      Click on a Link to Download…
 

Aggressive Communication	Dressing For Success
Budgeting Your Money	Facing Your Fears
Housing	Managing Addictions Cravings
Problem Solving For Yourself	Problem Solving With Others
Receiving Feedback

Potluck Recipes for Success E-Network

Potluck is also committed to growing and expanding our Employee and Employer Networks for this ongoing project. We are pleased to be working closely with BOB (Building Opportunities for Business) in the creation of practical workshops and events on the issues that affect employees with barriers and employers. We encourage you to join our ‘Recipes for Success E-Network’ to keep updated on new tools and events.

To join the ‘Potluck Recipes for Success E-Network’
please click here to email us…

For further information about Recipes for Success or if you are interested in additional Employment Support services for yourself or organization, please contact:

Heather O’Hara
Executive Director
Potluck Cafe Society
(604) 683-0073 ext. 379
Email:  heather@potluckcatering.com

Community Partnerships are very important to our organization's philosophy. In fact, our café drew from a community collaborative project. The Potluck Café Society believes that in order to work towards revitalizing the downtown community, we must be proactive in creating and managing community partnerships. Our definition of partnerships includes reaching out to like-minded organizations, non-profits, and community members in order to:

Assess the needs of the community

Improve services based on community feedback

Target resources where they are most effective and valued by the community

Foster community spirit and connectedness

To date, Potluck has a number of successful partnerships within our community, which include Happy Planet, A Loving Spoonful, Blade Runners, Aboriginal Front Door Society, Canadian Mental Health Association, Vancouver/Burnaby Branch, Human Resources Development Canada, and Central City Mission. To date, these partnerships have allowed us to deliver nutritious meals to a broad spectrum of people from those most in need, to those participating in training and skill development.

For those interested in partnering with Potluck, please contact:

Heather O'Hara
Executive Director
Potluck Cafe Society
(604) 683-0073 Ext. 379
email:  heather@potluckcatering.com

Although your Café and Catering purchases allow Potluck to continue our important work, there are many things that we could not do without the generous support of individuals, businesses and the for-profit sector. Here are some ways that you or your organization can help:

Contribute matching dollars to our sliding scale $2.50 meal program. Each contribution allows us to serve more meals, thereby reaching many more people in need.

$ 75 per month = one meal a day
$ 30 per month = 12 meals a month

Make a donation to our organization and receive a tax receipt.

Sponsor the training of a Downtown Eastside resident.

Give a Gift in Kind: We always have a list of items we need - Please call us for our current wish list

To make a donation or discuss fundraising ideas, contact us:

Heather O'Hara
Executive Director
604 683-0073 ext.379
email:  heather@potluckcatering.com