What We Do
Our case management team spends significant time preparing potential students focusing on stabilizing home life, ensuring the potential students are ready, willing, and able to start our program.
Once enrolled, WOW students engage in culinary training alongside professional chef instructors. Training takes place at the WOW Café in the Richard T. Castro Denver Human Services Building and Café Options, in downtown Denver. WOW’s chef instructors provide food service skills training while the case management team assists students with employments preparation by helping them overcome barriers to employment, learn life skills, secure job placements, and offer ongoing post-job placement follow up services.
WOW offers a three-phase approach allowing students to customize their learning needs:
- Phase 1 – Food Service Worker Training (6 weeks) – Entry level kitchen position such as dishwasher. Expected wage $8.50-$9.00/hour. Our Introduction to Kitchen Basics is 6 weeks of training in; kitchen awareness, food safety and sanitation, equipment identification, use and cleaning, kitchen math, and basic food prep.
- Phase 2) Prep Cook Training/Job Search (2-4 weeks) – Prep Cook position. Expected wage $9.00-$10.00/hour. Students learn to manage prep lists, enhance their knife skills, kitchen teamwork, and spend time in the career center working on their resumes, searching for on-line jobs, and working one-on-one with our job coaches.
- Phase 3) Line Cook Training (2-4 weeks)/Internship – Line Cook position. Expected wage $10.00-$12.00/hour. Most students who complete Phase 2 will be eligible to interview for an internship at Café Options where they can work on the line cook skills. They will also spend one day per week on Job Search while they are at Café Options. Or, they may intern at a local restaurant which has a specific opening for a prep or line cook position that our students may apply for. These internships are developed on a case by case basis.
- Job Readiness and Placement – Our Job Readiness Training begins in Phase 1 with classroom education on topics such as: Professionalism, Employer Expectations, and the importance of punctuality and attendance. In weeks 4-6 we create a Career Track and begin assisting our students with resume building, on-line application process, mock interviews, and job searches.
Other students who need additional support in learning a specific skill may be placed in an internship at one of our nonprofit partner internship sites; Project Angel Heart, The Gathering Place, or S.A.M.E. Café in order to give them an opportunity to further develop a specific skill prior to working on job search.
