With our new Culinary Arts Coordinator in place, Meredith Schork, we have hit the ground running. Our project is layered with learning opportunities for both people we support and our DSPs.

We have launched Easy Eats for Every1, which is our take on Hello Fresh. It offers healthy meals available in one of three options:

• Heat and Eat – Ready for the microwave/oven.
• Prepped just Prepare – Everything is measured and chopped, it just needs to be  put together. Great for people who want to learn to cook but haven’t mastered some of the basics.
• From Scratch – Raw ingredients typical to the Hello Fresh model.

Each healthy meal kit comes with written instructions and a QR code to our Easy Eats for Every1 YouTube channel. Here, Chef Meredith provides a tutorial for people we support on how to prepare your kit. This allows anyone we support to try a healthy meal while working on skills for independent living.

All of this is done within our culinary classroom with those we support in Employment Services. Having a true demand for prepping, cooking, and portioning allows for authentic learning and work experiences.

Our first Easy Eats kit was 150 Thanksgiving meals for people we support. It was delivered to those living in the community that were alone for the first time, families that didn’t have the means to cook all the fixings, and to some of the folks and staff in our IRAs. The menu included: turkey breast, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, green beans, roll, and homemade sweet potato pie.

We recently featured a two-ingredient pizza dough packed with protein. We have 50 people we support receiving the Heat and Eat option and 148 people receiving the Prepped just Prepare kits.

Recently, Community Prevoc made 1,200 cookies to be packaged into cookie kits just in time for the holidays. In addition to the traditional sugar cookie cut-outs, there was a gluten-free/vegan option.

We hope to continue this model and expand the kits being available to all the people we support and staff.

Like many events this year, our Adopt a Family campaign looked a little different. To follow safety guidelines, we did not do the Holiday Store this year, but had each of our families adopted by our generous donors. Donors adopted more than 50 families this holiday season to help more than 200 people have a brighter holiday.

We would like to thank our amazing individual donors as well as M&T Bank, Molly and Kate, and Hamburg Schools. We would also like to thank Barb Burgstahler for once again donating her beautiful handmade blankets.

Our Adopt a Family Campaign is one of our favorite traditions at Community Services, and we are thrilled that the WNY community has once again shared their generosity to make this holiday season merry and bright for so many families. We cannot thank you enough!

On October 5, we continued our partnership with The Service Collaborative of WNY, Inc. (TSC), and began a hybrid model hospitality course, teaching a certified curriculum through the American Hotel and Lodging Education Institute (AHLEI) in Guest Services Gold: Golden Opportunities.

The course was 10-weeks and 11 students were enrolled. Students were in the classroom one day a week, and then participated in remote learning for the rest of the week. The instructor taught a small morning class and a small afternoon class on Mondays, each with 5 or 6 students. This was to ensure the appropriate health and safety COVID protocols were being followed. Students completed a health assessment when entering the Jefferson Career Center, wore masks while in the classroom, and worked to keep their assigned desk areas clean.

In the classroom, focusing on concepts such as personalization, inclusion, and commitment, students were not only learning the skills necessary to provide outstanding Guest Services but also the skills needed to be successful in the workplace. Students were given opportunities to participate in fun and creative assignments that reinforced these concepts and skills. During the rest of the week, students were given weekly work packets to complete at home and participated in weekly one on one phone and/or Zoom calls with the instructor. While this was a new and different situation for everyone, the students excelled. They worked hard, always communicated with the instructor, and never complained.

When the November 18th announcement came that we were entering the Orange Zone, students went fully remote. This was incredibly sad news but, again, the students were so resilient. They worked with the instructor and TSC staff to coordinate drop-off times for their work packets, participated in weekly class Zoom calls, tried their best to ensure their work was completed on time, and quickly learned the online learning system through AHLEI in order to take their certification exam. These were no easy tasks with all of the changes happening around them.

Not only did the students find ways to work through the challenges the world threw at us and complete the course, but all of them passed the online certification exam with amazing results.

We are so proud of their accomplishments and are grateful to them for giving us a fun sense of normalcy during a very challenging and odd time in this world. We wish them nothing but the best in their future endeavors and have no doubt that they will continue to add to their list of accomplishments.