Nonprofit urban café creates opportunities for local residents in arts and culture and most importantly, in employment.
The Urban Studio Café opened its doors on August 29, 2009, after years of planning. The not-for-profit café is the economic engine behind the Urban Studio, which presents art programs and classes for low-income youth and adults in the Old North St. Louis neighborhood. The café was founded on six primary goals, with job creation, job skills training, and financial literacy at the heart of the operation. The founders, Phil Valko, Claire Wolff, and Liz Buerger, all graduated from Washington University in St. Louis.
Nuts and Bolts
The Urban Studio Café opened its doors on August 29, 2009, after years of planning. The not-for-profit café is the economic engine behind the Urban Studio, which presents art programs and classes for low-income youth and adults in the Old North St. Louis neighborhood. The café was founded on six primary goals, with job creation, job skills training, and financial literacy at the heart of the operation. The founders, Phil Valko, Claire Wolff, and Liz Buerger, all graduated from Washington University in St. Louis.
Nuts and Bolts
- In April 2009, $30,000 in seed money for the Café was won in the Skandalaris Center’s Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition at Washington University. This is the largest social enterprise competition in the world.
- The Café has partnered with Justine Peterson, a nonprofit that helps low- and moderate-income people with financial planning, to provide a monthly credit counseling session in the Urban Studio Café.
- Major funding for the Café comes from the Incarnate Word Foundation, Kaldi’s Social Change Grant from the Washington University Community Service Office, and the United Way.
- In less than one year since the Café has opened, it has conceived four community arts programs:
- Art Outside: Individuals painted their own puzzle pieces that, when fit together, created a large tile mosaic mural now on display in the Old North neighborhood.
- Picture the Future: A two week long introduction to black and white photography.
- Capoeira: An eight week all-ages session that taught students the acrobatic Brazilian martial art, capoeira, and the importance of healthy eating.
- Adventures in Media: A two week long summer program for teens designed to explore media, nutrition, food access and how all are related.
- The Café has created 5 jobs and 4 apprenticeships. The apprenticeships are filled by younger kids who help and shadow employees.
- Success of the programs is measured by attendance and surveys that are distributed after the programs are completed.
- In the future, the Café hopes to become a vibrant, self sustaining community hub. The 5 year plan includes moving to a larger space so that it can do more programming and potentially have a kitchen so it can employ people to cook and bake goods for sale.
- Claire Wolfe’s message to others who want to create a similar site is to “not lose sight of the mission when running a social enterprise, because it is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day business operations.”