Correctional Facility Project: Rikers Island
Hands-On-Food – Rikers Island
Give Someone a Meal… and Feed Them Once.
Teach Someone to Cook… and Help Give Them a Life.
For some, being in prison may be the end of the line. For others, it can be a new beginning, thanks to a unique organization called Hands-On-Food. Working in conjunction with the New York Board of Education, a unique culinary program has provided two classes per day, Monday through Friday, for young women confined at Rikers Island. Lessons, however, are not limited to just cooking techniques. This culinary program (started by Lauren) offers an innovative yet effective method for adolescent young women to learn life skills such as basic nutrition, portion control, and health issues. But, most importantly, they learn “how food, cooking and eating can be transformed from mechanical movements into acts of self-love and a memorable way to express devotion to others.”
Lauren Groveman founded Hands-On-Food (a non-profit corporation), in September of 2000, after volunteering to teach cooking classes for men living at the correctional facility on Rikers Island, in Queens, New York. Her classes there felt so valuable to her that she wanted to go deeper; she wanted desperately to teach the female population at Riker’s as well, but lacking their own kitchen facility, this was just not feasible. Resolved as ever, Lauren decided to start the Hands-On-Food organization. She set out to collect enough donations, both monetary and material, to build a special room—a room that would provide discernible light within a place of considerable darkness. Through much hard work, determination and persistence, Hands-On-Food assembled an extremely efficient, fully-equipped teaching kitchen in the Rose M. Singer Pavilion, in the high school facility on the female side of Rikers Island. In spring of 2009, the students were moved to another building and, although they are now using a kitchen, funded solely by the Board of Education, the culinary program is still going strong. Lauren is planning to, through Hands-On-Food, Inc., develop a new culinary/life-skills program at the Brooklyn Residential Center, in Brooklyn New York, which will provide education and support to female juveniles, remanded to this residence for 3 to 6 months.
Although Lauren’s classes on Rikers were originally confined to teaching culinary skills, it didn’t stay that way. Over the past decade, the scope of her professional life (and volunteer teaching) broadened to include the knowledge and skills she obtained as a Certified Professional Life Coach. So, in addition to teaching the many benefits derived from making thoughtful home cooking a priority, Lauren also volunteers her time and skill to teach universal spiritual principals and self-mastery skills to incarcerated male and female adolescents. Her strong belief is that by learning tools to push through old, limiting perceptions and self-sabotaging reactions, these troubled young individuals can become more willing and able to better care for themselves—and for their families (current or future) that will inevitably depend on them when they re-enter society.
Lauren is now accumulating donated books to create a “spiritual growth/self-mastery library” inside of a local correctional facility.
Ultimately, Lauren’s goal, regardless of the age or sex of an incarcerated student, is to help them to cultivate and embrace a new-found and truly positive sense of power —one that can help them to feel able and motivated to tap into their limitless potential as nurturing, creative and productive humans.
