Thank you, sir.
You know what? It's what is so fresh about the organization. Sometimes folks think that when a not-for-profit runs so many different businesses, really you're a restauranteur, you're a recycling company, you're a jam producer, and so on. Not at all; we're a producer of successful young people. All of those other things are just props. They're very shiny and wonderful props, but that's all they are.
For us, we're committed to coming back and filtering every decision through our mission vision and values, because if we're not careful, we might think we're a restauranteur, and if we think we're a restauranteur, we wouldn't hire people who are homeless. Or we wouldn't let people make a mistake and have them come back the next day. Or if somebody is experiencing anxiety and a customer is a little bit harsh and they start crying and they have to go to the back of the kitchen, which will happen sometimes, in a restaurant, they wouldn't come back. Or if somebody wants to work as a manager, we'd say that our vacancy is in the dish pit and that's where we're going to train them to operate the dishwasher. Typically that's what happens, right?
For me, I just love the fact that we can look at the growth, and it's so tangible for me. We've taken the social enterprise model that we've been doing—and I didn't talk about it in our brief—and we also offer housing for 30 young people in the same building that the café operates out of. There's a school board in there. There's a health care facility in there. It's all very non-traditional compared with what was. Thirty years ago, it was very traditional; come in, get an assessment, go through some workshops, go on a job placement, and good luck to you. That did not work very well for folks who had no experience. That did not work at all for people who were experiencing mental health issues and challenges.
For me, it's just so fresh, because I see that we're doing the same thing and we're responding to the same gap in our community, but we're doing it so much more deeply than we've ever done it before. It stays very fresh.