Second Harvest Food Bank facing challenges placing students in jobs during pandemic

Food banks helping out with jobs

Coronavirus is making it hard for people to find work and food banks are coming to the rescue. Some of those same food banks help culinary students find steady jobs but the pandemic has changed all that.

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Second Harvest’s Culinary Training Program helps unemployed or underemployed chefs improve their skills and find work. It was very successful pre-COVID but has been struggling since the pandemic began.

The food bank has been celebrating placing 100% of its culinary program students in steady jobs, but COVID-19 brought that to a screeching halt.

“When the pandemic hit, it kind of shut everything down. We kind of had to flex and figure out when these students graduate, where are we going to place them?” said Nancy Brumbaugh, food service director at the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Many restaurants are shuttered. Those that are open are focusing on employing their existing staff, not hiring.

A recent graduate of the program, Wilnise Pierre said she feared not finding work for a while.

“I was worried because I have to take care of my two children and I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do’ because I did apply for unemployment. They did not approve it,” Pierre said.

One way the food bank is helping these students is by hiring them for its own kitchen.

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“I actually hired the entire class that was graduating when the pandemic hit,” Brumbaugh said.

Second Harvest Food Bank (FOX 35 Orlando)

The food bank is offering Pierre, a single mom of two, a full-time job.

“I was so excited about it and I said, ‘Oh God, you are so good God.’ I am so happy now I can say I have a job,” she said.

The culinary program is also now offering students training in other skills.

“We have some students who are learning customer service. We’re also teaching them [Microsoft] Excel, Outlook, Word, so that they might find employment, maybe in a call center,” Brumbaugh said.

She says it's buying students some time for the hospitality and tourism industries to recover.

Woman asking for help for first time

A theme park worker still out of work is having to turn to a food bank for assistance. Her story is one shared by many in Central Florida as our tourism economy has suffered greatly from the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s finding them different skills to get them employed right away and as we ride this pandemic out and the hospitality industry comes back up. They’ll still be able to work in that industry and along with that, now they have customer service skills or other stackable credentials that they could use in that job,” Brumbaugh said.

The food bank said the extra hands in the kitchen are a blessing because, in these tough economic times, the demand for meals has gone up in the community.