2011 Giving Back
This is my favorite time of year for many reasons. I’m fortunate enough to have a good job, family, and friends. It’s a great time to appreciate what you have in life and soak up all of the good times (and food). Just as important as appreciating your own life is supporting charitable causes and communities that are less fortunate. Finding the most impactful places to donate your hard earned money isn’t always easy but this needs to be the time of year to find creative ways to give back to the community and the environment.
When I first opened TaKorean I also started our very own philanthropy program and pledged to donate a portion of our total sales to local charities specifically that made a positive impact on at-risk youth, food access, and environmental issues. We planned to work on this program each month and give to twelve different organizations each year. While we will continue to pledge at least 1% of total sales to local charities, we have now decided to give more dollars to a smaller number of charities. There are only so many organizations in the DC metro area who make the kind of impact that I’d like to support and I’d rather support them at a higher level than scramble to find new charities each month.
This holiday season we are donating more than 1% of our total sales split between two of our favorite charities. Both of these charities have had amazing and impactful years and are recognized on the national and international scales.
DC Central Kitchen:
What could me more important this holiday season than creating jobs? Despite the weak economy, DC Central Kitchen is placing ex offenders, former addicts and chronically unemployed into jobs that pay a living wage with benefits.
Their solution is to provide a second chance by training people for careers in the culinary arts. The 14 week Culinary Job Training program teaches valuable life skills and helps people facing incredible challenges move forward in their careers and in life.
When I talk about impact of the charities we like to support we mean results. DCCK reports that over 80% of students in the most recent graduating class are now employed at restaurants, health care facilities, and local businesses. DC Central Kitchen also creates jobs for our graduates within our social enterprise Fresh Start, where they prepare nutritious, scratch-cooked meals for DC students, and provide full service catering throughout DC. TaKorean is pledging a large percentage of our annual charity budget to DCCK’s job’s program, however they do much more than that for our city. Check them out here: http://www.dccentralkitchen.org/
Anacostia Watershed Society:
The mission of the Anacostia Watershed Society is to protect and restore the Anacostia River and its watershed communities by cleaning the water, recovering the shores, and honoring the heritage.
The vision is to make the Anacostia River and its tributaries swimmable and fishable, in keeping with the Clean Water Act, for the health and enjoyment of everyone in the community. Community involvement is critical to achieving this vision and AWS seeks win-win solutions through strong partnerships and coalitions, with all parts of the community, government, and other stakeholders. Core to our work is reaching out to, educating and engaging the next generation of decision-makers, our youth. TaKorean has chosen to support AWS as well this holiday season in an effort to improve environmental concerns in communities that are least fortunate. We also want to educate the youth along the Anacostia River to become stewards of the environment. Learn more about the Anacostia Watershed Society here: http://www.anacostiaws.org/main