Today we feel very lucky to have Jen Shaw on the show, who is the founder of Emerge, an incredible social impact project. Emerge is a mobile food van, that employs disengaged children. Teaching them to cook, clean and serve customers, along with learning many other life skills. These children face incredible hardship in their lives, but with the help of the food van, they are given hope and much-needed skills to set them up for the future.

Jen’s own powerful story and the importance of positive role models

Jen is one of those one in a million type of people that you come across, that simply wants to help others out in life. While these days Jen has built an incredibly happy family environment, where she is the proud mother of seven children (!), it hasn’t always been this way.

She shares with us her family background, including a rough upbringing which involved her leaving the family home at just 13 years old. She dropped out of school, spent a lot of time on the streets, reverted to alcohol and was always in trouble with the law. At just 15 she was pregnant with her first baby.

It was not until she met up with some incredible mentors, who reminded her that life didn’t have to be that way, that things started to change for the better. Through this mentorship, she was able to get her life back on track and build this amazing business.

The structure of the project

The children Jen works with learn to cook, clean and serve customers, via the food van. All of the profits are put back into the Emerge project, where Jen helps guide these kids. She sets them up with some of the basic life skills that a lot of us take for granted.  They come out of the 16-week program – where they are taught everything from budgeting and making the most of every dollar, to eating healthier, and even apply for jobs. These kids and then well on their way to moving into a successful future. The foundation is set upon building their confidence levels and skill set. The trainees who finish Jen’s program are even offered a paid position at the end!

Holistic focus and sustainable funding streams

Jen loves helping those in her program to discover how incredible real food can be, and how it can help with overall health and wellbeing, particularly their mental health. She teaches the importance of cooking a meal from scratch, while blending a holistic approach, including the elements of food, physical fitness, goal setting and self-esteem.

The food van operates like any other business, but its core role is that it’s a social impact business. Jen doesn’t focus on profits, but rather how many kids can get re-engaged in training, and most importantly how many lives she can change.

Jen quickly recognised that traditional community service work is not very sustainable, given the need to rely on grants and funding. An amazing program can be allocated funding at the outset, and go on to create incredible change, but then the next minute the funding dries up. She discusses how she keeps a sustainable funding stream, to grow her program and continue to deliver to the community.

Healthy food at the heart of the project

Jen discusses the ever-evolving definition of healthy food. In the past, she has embarked on a strictly paleo and sugar-free diet, but she’s now taken on a sensible yet simple diet, rich in foods that help her feel good and energised. You won’t hear the word paleo or gluten-free in her food van though, these kids are barely eating anything, let alone understand what all this ‘foodie’ talk is! For this reason, she chooses to focus on simple, healthy and budget-friendly food options.

Empowering kids to make their own empowering choices on eating åÊ

Jen shows these kids how to make a basic fried rice, bolognese with plenty of veggies, simple salads and why it is easier to batch make meals. The bottom line is, some of the best things these kids can learn is a simple approach to food, and meals that make you feel good mentally and emotionally. It’s all about exposure to this way of life and building their knowledge base to healthy eating. Jen focuses on replicating a loving family and home environment.

These kids have survived the worst of the worst and are still standing at the end of the day. Their resilience is simply mind-boggling, as they are truly survivors with so many skills to cope (even without degrees under their belt). They are full of incredible ideas about the future and show great promise in fulfilling their dreams.

If you can support this in any way, please head to the links below and make a donation to this wonderful cause.

Links