A sun-drenched commercial test kitchen bursts with energy as a group of young people call out orders to each other, warning of hot pots and pans swinging around the room.
The newly renovated metal-clad kitchen smells of cumin and raw onions, as a tray of sizzling chicken and charred green peppers makes its way into to-go boxes of chicken fajitas.
Lunch is being prepared for the fellows and local community at the headquarters of Drive Change, a Brooklyn, New York, nonprofit organization that provides culinary training to teens and young adults who have previously been incarcerated or impacted by the criminal justice system.
Throughout the year, fellows enter a paid, four-month program where they learn kitchen basics like proper knife skills and how to sauté.
The organization also provides mental health services and professional development in an effort to provide more stable options for its fellows.
“People will always have misconceptions,” Dupree Wilson said, adding that “people just think we’re all, like, violent murderers and killers who don’t have no self control, which is not true.”
Wilson is now a culinary associate with Drive Change but began as a fellow in the organization’s first cohort in 2014.
He found success in commercial kitchens shortly after he finished the program, but lost his cooking job during the pandemic. Wilson found his way back to Drive Change and now serves as a mentor to current fellows.
“I always say I got bad blood. Like my pops went to prison, his pops went to prison, I’ve been in prison. It’s a cycle,” Wilson said.
“With my son, I don’t want him to have that experience. … My motivation for everything I do is to make sure my son grows up better than I did,” he said.
Wilson’s story is one that millions of Americans are familiar with. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than…
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