Sausha Weaver dreams of owning a restaurant and serving her favorite food to the people of Boston. Her love for cooking sparked at age 16 when her uncle hired her at his West African seafood restaurant in Dudley Square. Using the knowledge she soaked up in working there for just a few years, Sausha refined her culinary skills over the years — especially cooking oxtail, her favorite dish — leading friends and family alike to question her about why she hasn’t yet started a restaurant.
After years of being a bus driver for the city of Boston, Weaver, now 38, is turning her lifelong love for food into her career.
Weaver is on week four of her program at New England Culinary Arts Training, or NECAT, located on Bradston Street near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard. NECAT is a free culinary training program that provides career training and employment opportunities to students from under-resourced communities.
Weaver joined NECAT as a “Black Hat,” which is what they call students in the introductory stage of the program. Students spend the first six weeks at NECAT in a classroom learning proper food preparation and service before applying their technique in the kitchen. In just a few weeks, Weaver has seen the program foster a strong sense of community, and for her, it feels “like a second home.”
“Everyone at NECAT is on the same page. Everyone is on the same team,” she said. “No one is better than the other, and we can all learn from each other. That’s great because that makes you relax a little bit more, so you can just focus on what you need to be doing to better yourself.”
NECAT was modeled as an arts and technology training program with a focus on culinary arts when it launched in 2013. Since then, the program has evolved and the staff adjusted the program to better fit the needs of students, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds, face chronic unemployment or even experienced incarceration.
“It's good to open the door for people who are in sobriety, people who are returning citizens,” said Anthony Seymour, a case worker at NECAT who is known as “Big Time” by his contemporaries. “It gives them an outlook on coming back into society and being successful.”
This shifted NECAT’s programming toward a culinary arts focus that also incorporates social-emotional learning, financial literacy and career development aspects to the curriculum. Through their holistic approach, “students are able to find a sense of purpose and confidence,” said Jessica Williamson, development manager of NECAT.
“They’re so empathetic, which makes a difference,” Weaver said. “They’re very personable. It’s not just about showing up and coming to school; it’s ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Are things in your life okay?’ and ‘How can we help you, aside from [cooking]?’”
After successfully completing the first half of the course, “Black Hats” graduate and become “Orange Hats”. At this stage, students enter a professionally equipped kitchen, instructed by Chef Tom Nelson, to put their culinary knowledge to practice.
Teaching at NECAT, he said, has led him to reinvent himself as a chef. Before NECAT, he taught culinary arts at a vocational college, and now, he has a new approach to teaching. For Nelson, it’s all about gauging students’ skillset and forming realistic expectations around where NECAT training will lead them.
“I want them to get into a position where they're comfortable but to also have the opportunity to grow,” Nelson said. “Just like before COVID, they need capable and dependable hands. And that sometimes is a struggle with some of our students because the executive skills and training of being somewhere or being somewhere on the daily is sometimes going to lose some folks, and that's kind of a challenge. And so we try to develop those good habits.”
A major part of NECAT’s success is attributed to their case workers, to which each student has been assigned since 2019. With case workers, students are given a gateway to resources and help with personal challenges such as transportation, housing or even substance abuse.
Emely Rivas, an “Orange Hat” student at NECAT, is especially grateful for her caseworker, Brianna Hughes, who has helped her become a stronger support system for her nephew with bipolar depression.
“When [my nephew] called, I didn’t know what to say, and having a one-on-one with [Brianna], she printed out some stuff and pinpointed some areas that I could work on. She gave me more information to work with to go further with than just sitting with him, and it’s really really been helping,” Rivas said. “I’ve definitely been able to be stronger and have more information for him. … I don’t think they even understand how much they’ve impacted me.”
Many students, like Rivas, learned about the program as a referral from community organizations, such as the Department of Transitional Assistance. Others, like Weaver, learned through word of mouth, and thus NECAT aims to grow their digital presence on social media and their website to share their students’ stories and empower others to enroll.
Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, NECAT has been able to continue their program with limited restrictions and successfully launch their new program in partnership with Suffolk County House of Corrections to train incarcerated individuals. However, they still need donations to maintain their free training and properly support their students, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
The core of NECAT’s approach is cultivating an inviting space and providing resources that enable students to focus on learning life skills, creating good habits and realizing their potential. NECAT prepares graduates for challenges they may face beyond their career in the food service industry.
“We can see some of the trajectory of a lot of people, how they come in here with problems, and we try to resolve as best we can,” Big Time said.“Some of the stories, just some of the people we meet and some of the gratification that they show when they're graduating, the tears that come down, the eyes of families that come to support them — it just gives you so much gratification. It touches my heart.“
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