Our Vision
At The Social Impact Cafe PHL, one of our community-invested projects, The S.H.I.N.E ProgramMe is a new approach to food and literacy that is needed in light of the poor nutritional health status of Philadelphians and beyond living in poverty with food insecurities. We embrace food-related habits, environments, and norms through reading food-related literature whether a restaurant review, recipes from cookbooks, as well as nutritional labels.
We believe these youth serve as role models that possess an understanding of food and its uses, the concept of “food literacy” or being food literate is being explored as a new approach to food that has the potential to facilitate healthy food relationships. Through partnering with local restaurants and eateries to serve as hosts; we intend to translate food literacy and well-being knowledge and skills through familial, cultural, educational, and private businesses.
Food literacy extends beyond nutritional recommendations and culinary lessons, to fostering important and vital connections between food, people, health, and the environment both theoretically and practically.
Integrating current constructs of food literacy presented in the literature such as magazines, menus, and recipe books; exploring the importance of educating for food literacy in order to rectify issues raised with respect to current food-related concerns and ideologies.
In our vision of “Breaking the Cycle of Trauma: One Meal at a Time,” we use food as a point of connection between communities at large and their diverse members. We hope that time “breaking bread” will lead to less time being idle, as most traumatic experiences spring out of idleness.
Our work relies on a lot of community involvement. The saying ‘it takes a village,’ serves as the basis to reach and serve the community. We are glad to have the generosity of a growing network of local entrepreneurs, educational dignitaries, religious aficionados, elected officials, and law enforcement. All of these community members have helped our organization to engage in the community and provide opportunities for out-of-school enrichment