Progress of Starbucks jobs program unclear
By Daphne Chen
It’s been just under four months since a Harlem Starbucks and the nonprofitAbyssinian Development Corporation announced they would work together to create positive change in Harlem, but the partnership has been slow to get started.
Starbucks and the Harlem-based ADC said in October that they would collaborate to give Harlem residents business training and to work on community service initiatives, with Starbucks agreeing to donate 5 cents of every purchase to ADC up to at least $100,000 in the first year.
Touted as a jobs creation and community involvement program, the “Store Partnership Model” between ADC and the Starbucks at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street has been underway for almost four months, but the results so far are unclear. The Starbucks location opened in 1999 as the first Starbucks in historic Harlem.
ADC spokesperson Harris Bostic II said the Starbucks is meant to act as a “hub” for finding out information about ADC’s programs. He said ADC has started holding orientation sessions with Starbucks and other partner organizations to tell them about the programs ADC offers.
“Not only can we offer those programs to the partners themselves, but also to the customers,” Bostic said. “We look at the partners and employees as somewhat extensions of us because they will have to convey information to the customers if they ask if ADC can help them find a job, or ask about the community board.”
“It has been going extremely well,” Bostic added. “They are becoming part of the Abyssinan Development Corp. family. They have been supporting our education work, we have been supporting their create-jobs program.”
The original press release announcing the partnership said Starbucks would “increase local awareness and engage local residents, share our business expertise with them … [and] provide strategic technical and management assistance, join together on community service imperatives and work with the organizations to plan unique ways Starbucks can support their jobs training and placement work.” It also said the partnership would focus on after-school programs and offer job training and management assistance at the Starbucks.
So far, ADC’s only visibile mark on the store is a chalkboard, called the “community board,” which features fliers about ADC’s many services—including tech-free tax preparation services and GED programs—set against a mural of Harlem. Many customers in the Starbucks were not aware of this partnership, including Harlem resident and musician Cush Lundy.
“I didn’t know they had something here with the Abyssinian Church,” Lundy said. “That’s the first time I heard about Starbucks getting involved in the community. They’re not publicizing enough, but I think that’s a cool thing.”
Starbucks spokesperson Kristin Oke noted that the partnership is still in its beginning stages.
“It’s been just under three months,” Oke said. “To be honest, because it is so early in the program, I’m not sure we’re going to have much of a program at this point.”
Starbucks manager Andy Hambrick said he was “curious to see what’s happening” with the partnership in the next few months. ADC is planning several events, including a career fair in mid-March for students pursuing GEDs, for which Starbucks, as a corporate sponsor, will conduct mock interviews. Starbucks will also host barista training information sessions at several church schools over the next few months, although the dates are still uncertain.
“We’ve asked people, what did you think the partnership would look like,” Bostic said. “People said new building, larger store, schools built, and we take that information. But the partnership’s really to support the work we have been doing and we will continue to do. We will use the resources and exposure and popularity of Starbucks to get that message to wider audiences.”
“For some people, that’s disappointing because they want to see something capital, something physical, they want to see an increase of something,” Bostic added. “But we’re increasing in ways they don’t realize. They take that coffee cup and walk into the neighborhood. We’re monitoring it, we’re getting feedback.”
Bostic added that he believes the partnership with ADC has already brought more customers to the store.
“We don’t have quantitative data, but anecdotally there has been an uptick in sales and transactions in that store,” he said.
Hambrick agreed with Bostic that there had been a slight increase in business.
“We’ve seen an uptick over the weekends from people coming from the services,” he said. “Abyssinian keeps it fresh in their heads.”
Theater group inspires teens in Harlem
Photos, video, and article published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on April 12, 2011.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and Jamal Joseph is coaching 30 or so kids through a rehearsal in Prentis Hall, a Columbia building on 125th Street facing the construction pit that will become the new Manhattanville campus.
He stands up and holds his fist in the air. Immediately, solemnly, the kids and teens around him, who have been chatting, dancing, singing, and laughing, stop and do the same thing.
“What is Impact?” Joseph asks quietly.
They respond in unison. “It’s not a game!”
Harlem projects residents say cameras not a crime cure
Published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on February 16, 2011.
Through a heavy lisp and missing teeth, Joseph Gomez tells a story familiar to many of his neighbors: in the 13 years he has lived in the Manhattanville Houses on 126th Street, he says he has been robbed three times.
Despite the installation of almost 100 surveillance cameras at the development, Gomez says life at this housing project isn’t any safer.
“The cameras don’t work,” Gomez said. “People use masks, they use spray paint, sometimes the cameras are blurry or don’t get their faces. By the time the police come, it’s too late. They’re gone.”
As Northwest opens, faculty question vision, priorities
Published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on December 10, 2010. Co-written with Henry Wilson of the Columbia Daily Spectator.
Administrators have hailed the Northwest Corner Building, which officially opens this morning, as a boon for the science departments—a high-tech facility that will stimulate scientific research and attract top faculty to Columbia. But even as the building opens, some professors say the University’s existing science facilities are, in the words of one professor, “hugely inadequate.”
The current science facilities are aging and outdated and lack many expensive instruments that are crucial to some research, some say, arguing that the new building will not do nearly enough to address these problems.
Despite rezoning, development slow on 125th
Published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on December 8, 2010
More than two years after the city passed plans to rezone Harlem’s historic thoroughfare, few development projects are actually pushing forward on 125th Street.
In 2008, a rezoning plan for 125th Street—known for bustling nightlife and jazz at the Apollo Theater—went through the City Council, calling for more retail activity, taller buildings, and an increase in affordable housing.
Cuomo rally draws protests
Published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on September 28, 2010
Gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo’s early morning campaigning trip in Harlem did not go exactly as planned.
And it wasn’t just the persistent rain that got in his way.
Cuomo—the current New York State attorney general and the Democratic candidate for governor, who is up against GOP candidate Carl Paladino—planned a 7:30 a.m. campaigning session on 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue, where the A, B, C, and D trains stop.
But members of the Freedom Party also came to the event to make their voices heard and hijack Cuomo’s campaigning.
Search One Rescue seeks student recruitments
Published in The Sidekick on February 6, 2009
In the Dallas area, there are 33 people who know that when their pagers beep, lives are at stake.
In 1983, Coppell resident, former policeman and part-time EMT Paul Lake gathered six friends, put them through a training program and established Search One Rescue Team as a ground search management organization.
Now, 27 volunteers and 25 canines later, Lake has created one of the most respected search and rescue teams in the nation. For three years, Lake conceptualized the professionally-run search and rescue team that would revolutionize the way missing persons searches were conducted in Texas.
Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater: Why we cheat
Published in Coppell Student Media on February 27, 2010
Every student and teacher knows the telltale signs. A yawn and a stretch. The ever-so-slight glance of eyes to the left and right. The glint of an iPhone held casually beneath the table, away from the prying eyes of teachers.
It’s cheating.
And to some, it’s also a survival technique. In the words of one sophomore student, “If you care about it enough, you cheat.”
