- [Announcer] This Great Big Story was made possible by
Wells Fargo, established 1852, re-established 2018.
- [Narrator] This is a story about a dinner.
But not just any dinner. This is a dinner
that involves this kitchen, with these cooks.
And this garden, with these gardeners.
It's a center that's helping a community
fight homelessness in a big way.
San Francisco has a large population of homeless people.
Just last year, over 4,000 homeless people
were reported unsheltered - and over 6,000 unemployed.
Enter Farming Hope.
A non-profit created to help those in need
by training them in urban farming, and cooking,
in the hopes of helping them find full-time employment.
Joining us from the Farming Hope initiative
is Jamie, Kevin, and Asha.
- We just wanted to be the organizers
to piece this knowledge together of how do we grow food
and cook it in a way that opens up our food system,
that gets people the job,
and the training that they need and want.
So what we do is we recruit folks
who are experiencing homelessness
to join the Farming Hope community
and put our mission into action.
- [Narrator] But for this to work,
participants have to learn the true meaning
of farm-to-table.
So the first step is in the garden with Asha.
- My role is to help facilitate the employees in the garden.
So since we just planted this one,
maybe we won't harvest it.
But we can harvest from the rooftop garden.
We water, we're also growing new plants,
so we're putting seeds in the ground.
We harvest every week for the kitchen.
Kevin uses these in his tacos.
And so being here and encouraging them.
Beautiful.
To get back in touch with themselves
just as much as learning about gardening,
I think is important.
Then once the produce is grown,
it's off to the kitchen with Kevin.
- My role in the kitchen is to facilitate
a lot of the hands-on training that we're doing
with our transitional homeless folks.
We do a lot of stuff from knife basics, time management,
cleanliness, stuff that can be directly transferable
to other jobs, either in food or not in food.
I'm always really inspired
by the people that we're working with,
'cause they're the ones that
really dedicate themselves to the work.
They're here; they're putting in 110 percent,
so I think our folks really deserve a lot of the applause.
(chuckles)
- [Narrator] And finally, the team gets to enjoy
the fruits of their labor.
Each week, they serve up a meal to both homeless,
and non-homeless people.
- [Kevin] So for tonight's menu, we started off with
a roasted butternut squash taco.
The second taco, that's a stewed zucchini.
The last taco is a fried rockfish taco.
And then lastly for desert,
we're serving a vegan chocolate mousse.
- [Narrator] And while for some eating is the best part,
for Philip, it's the experience.
- I was homeless for almost six months
for the very first time in my life.
I was introduced to Farmers Hope.
So I learned a whole lot. - [Asha] Can you smell it,
it smells like lemons a little bit.
- Right.
It kept me there thinking about my life.
So when I'm there, I have peace.
They gave me a new place to go.
- I think the most unique part of Farming Hope
is gathering people from distinct walks of life
to break bread together, and just be next to each other.
Not every moment of our life has to be about
fixing everything, and it actually has to start
from that place of empathy, of awareness, of neighborliness.
And by involving everybody at the same level
on a dining table, it allows us to open the space up
to actual dialogue, actual empathy, actual solutions.