FareStart Offers Food and Hope to Seattle Community

Seattle, WA. For 30 years, FareStart has offered food industry training and employment opportunities to individuals experiencing homelessness or poverty. During that time, their employees’ work has always gone directly back into the community, cooking and preparing meals for others in need across the greater Seattle area. Up until now, nothing has been able to stop FareStart or its employees — not even a pandemic.

“The pandemic has brought together the community, not just within the Farestart walls,” Stephanie Schoo, Marketing and Communications Director at FareStart, explained. “We’ve seen an outpouring of support from restaurant partners and donors and volunteers and other nonprofit organizations that are all wanting to join together to make sure people get the help that they need.”

Initially, the pandemic took its toll on the Seattle-based nonprofit, forcing an abrupt shutdown of restaurants and catering facilities in and around the community. With its largest employers unable to function through an economic shutdown, FareStart quickly shifted gears, re-deploying its workers and resources into efforts to provide emergency meals to underserved individuals.

Since then, FareStart has helped orchestrate over 1.5 million emergency meals to shelters, housing facilities, and Seattle Public School sites across the city.

“We were able to see right away the impacts of COVID — folks who are low-income, or even students that used to be getting meals in one place could no longer get those meals,” Schoo said. “We want to make sure those meals get to high-need communities.”

Recently, Farestart launched its COVID-friendly education program to begin providing those experiencing homelessness or poverty with culinary courses once again. The online training also reintroduced former students who lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. 

A little over a month later, on the morning of Oct 29th, fourteen students went on to graduate from FareStart’s inaugural remote learning program.

“Creating a virtual curriculum is very new territory for us,” Schoo said. “This has been a stressful time for all of us, no matter your background or socio-economic status, And to have students stick with the program and come back reinvigorated — I think it speaks to that resiliency and hope.”

From FareStart: 

For those looking to support FareStart in guiding clientele through gradual workforce reentry programs, or perhaps provide reheatable meals to students without easy access to school lunches, it’s not difficult.

With one click of the easy-to-uses “donate” button at the top of its home page, anyone can join FareStart in serving those who’ve bumped up against heightened hurdles during the turbulence of COVID-19.

“People in poverty struggle to escape the cycle they are in and often face other compounding barriers to getting and keeping a job. At FareStart, we help people overcome those barriers by teaching them work and life skills they need to succeed in the foodservice industry — and in life.”