Citizen of the Week: Lisa Miccolis
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Citizen of the Week: Lisa Miccolis
Citizen of the Week: Lisa Miccolis
Why a coffee shop owner is hiring and mentoring those who have aged out of the foster intendance organization.
Aug. 17, 2015
UPDATE: Since this story ran final fall, Miccolis has opened a brick-and-mortar coffee shop in Brewerytown, at 28th and Girard, and hired another three employees who are former foster kids. She too has ii supervisors who help with training, mentoring and running the buffet. The Monkey & The Elephant now holds YouthQuake, a monthly open mic night with Apiary Magazine; monthly foster parent info sessions; and Showtime Fri events for a rotating cadre of artists whose work hangs on the walls. Miccolis says business has been good, but also challenging—in add-on to the normal strains of opening a new eatery, Miccolis says her payroll is extra high to ensure all her employees become the shifts they need to complete the preparation program. The cafe is open up vii to v everyday.
Six years ago, when Lisa Miccolis took a trip to South Africa, she expected to feel a cultural awakening of sorts. She only never idea the trip would open up her eyes to a cultural carve up right here in Philadelphia.
During her travels, Miccolis befriended Ephraim, a teenage boy at an orphanage who had left his home in Republic of zimbabwe at 14 for a ameliorate education in S Africa. When he was xviii, two things happened: Southward Africa revoked Ephraim'due south refugee status, and he aged out of the orphanage. Already dorsum home, Miccolis learned through email with him about his struggles to finish high schoolhouse, to find a place to sleep, to stay in a land where he could be safe and successful. Information technology was middle-wrenching—specially when Miccolis realized that she could do niggling to help Ephraim or others similar him in South Africa. "I'thousand non from there, and take no back up there, and don't know how the system works," she says. "My ability to enact some alter in South Africa was limited. At that place wasn't much point in trying to make a alter there."
Each yr, 250 youth age out of Philly's foster care system. Ninety-v percent have no source of income; 1 in three live below the poverty line; forty pct experience homelessness. "Information technology is easier for a young man who has a drug and alcohol trouble to become services," says Miccolis.
Instead, Miccolis founded The Monkey & The Elephant to serve a similar population right here in Philadelphia: Each twelvemonth, 250 youth age out of the foster intendance system in Philly with trivial or no back up. Ninety-five percent have no source of income; one in three alive beneath the poverty line; 40 per centum experience homelessness. Unsurprisingly, one in iv end upwardly incarcerated within 2 years. "There is naught for these guys," say Miccolis. "It is easier for a young man who has a drug and alcohol problem to get services, than for a young human being who doesn't."
Miccolis envisions another path. A Wayne native, xxx-year-old Miccolis spent 7 years subsequently college working in coffeeshops effectually the area, managing both the Milkboys in Ardmore and Bryn Mawr, and Boondocks Hall Coff
ee in Merion. She loves everything most cafes: The community of regulars, the coincidental networking, the "vibe that naturally exists." Now Miccolis has melded her honey of coffeeshops to her desire to help sometime foster care kids. She launched The Monkey & The Elephant a year ago to exist a coffeeshop whose baristas have all recently left foster care, and a nonprofit that volition provide life skills training and social service aid through an 8-calendar month curriculum that Miccolis is currently developing.
In Apr, Miccolis received a $15,000 Social Innovation grant from Women's Manner to launch a pilot program with two immature men, ages 19 and 22, who she hired to piece of work with her at a pop-up coffee shop in Kensington co-working space ImpactHub, where their minimum wage bacon helps to defray living costs. While didactics them to be baristas, Miccolis is also grooming the men in related chore skills—speaking with customers, networking, working a annals, handling money. She also is helping them programme for their futures. Training sessions include piece of work with a financial planner to teach the men how to upkeep and save for college; help with the actual application process; and lessons in how to handle conflict, and how to get an apartment. Miccolis says she also has spent hours tutoring the men on their "personal lift pitch"—helping them to shape their dreams and articulate them.
"No one has always taught them how to nowadays themselves," she says. "When someone asks them what they do, they need to have more than just 'I piece of work in a java shop.' One of them at present says, 'I am a barista at The Monkey & The Elephant; I piece of work equally a peer mentor; I'm interested in criminal justice; and I'thou applying to higher."
She hopes to make The Monkey & The Elephant a cool and welcoming place to hang out for customers, served by baristas and managers who are all erstwhile foster intendance youth. And so she hopes to take the plan national.
In the concluding twelvemonth, Miccolis has worked with v former foster kids through The Monkey & The Elephant. She became an official nonprofit two months ago, and has launched a $lxx,000 fundraising entrada that would let her to open up a bricks and mortar coffeeshop in a space she'southward located in Newboldt. She hopes to make it a cool and welcoming identify to hang out for customers, who are served—eventually—by baristas and managers who are all quondam foster care youth. And then, she says, she hopes to take the program national.
"Ephraim fabricated me recognize what information technology meant to not grow up the way I did—with a supportive family that helped me, in college and even after," Miccolis says. "That changed my life. Now I want do the aforementioned for as many of these youth as I can."
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/citizen-of-the-week-lisa-miccolis-2/
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