The Afghan Women's Catering Group currently employs 10 women and
a volunteer coordinator. Several members of the group have taken
on specific roles, which are essential to the group as well as to
learn new skills, which can be considered transferable in the future.
Upon receiving an order, the coordinator of the group assigns the
order to one or more members, depending on the size, in an alternating
fashion. When orders are large enough, all members of the group
come together and equally contribute.
The Afghan Women's Catering Group relies solely on word-of-mouth
marketing and nonprofit organizations in the GTA comprise a large
majority of their customer base. With hopes of eventually catering
to the general public.
Since the beginning, the group's major obstacle has been to secure
kitchen space. However, as of last year, the group has had the fortunate
opportunity to become a regular tenant of Field-to-Table's kitchen
incubator program and has been able to use their kitchen facility
as needed. As well, we have had the ongoing support of the Field-to-Table
staff and hope to continue to call this facility home for a long
time.
The group realizes the importance of networking and has become
an active member of the CED Learning Network's Food Sector Working
Group. This is an excellent forum for shared learning, resources
and skills between CED projects in the city of Toronto as well as
the opportunity to partner with other CED groups on various catering
orders.
We are also extremely excited about the launch of the CED Learning
Network catalog, which will increase our exposure exponentially.
During this time, I have realized that not only do the members
of the group continue to participate because of the extra earnings
and social aspect that the group provides, but because they truly
love to share their traditional cuisine with the people of Toronto.
They are proud of their culture and cuisine and feel good when others
have a chance to enjoy the delicious flavours of their homeland
of Afghanistan.
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