Havenly Café Celebrated 'Employment Partners' At Appreciation Dinner

NEW HAVEN, CT — A café on a mission, Havenly is at once a home, training space, and community center for refugee and immigrant women stuck in cycles of poverty.

Tuesday, Havenly Café & Homestyle Kitchen celebrated its employment partners —"Our incredible community partners who employ refugee and immigrant women from our job training program," —with an appreciation dinner.

"Refugees and immigrants find it very difficult to find jobs, especially with multiple barriers such as language, digital literacy, childcare, and lack of cultural awareness training," Havenly spokesperson Pamela Javran said. "Over 30 guests, including employers and managers from local businesses and organizations across New Haven, gathered to celebrate the success of our nonprofit’s efforts to get New Haven employers to hire refugee and immigrant women."

Those employment partners are: Sodexo at the University of New Haven; Wooster Italian eatery Gioia; Clifford Beers; Yale New Haven Health; Morning Glory Infant Toddler Center at Yale; Cercle, a nonprofit collaborative improving education outcomes for underserved communities; MATCH, a public-private nonprofit facility providing hands-on manufacturing training in New Haven; and more.

The event featured speeches from employment partners, who shared Havenly graduates' progress and their jobs and the "impact they’ve had on their company."

"We want to recognize and promote refugee employment initiatives that have been made possible through Havenly’s partnerships with such organizations," Javran said.

Guests enjoyed a Middle Eastern feast prepared by Havenly head chef, Nieda, with the help of trainees.

"We are so grateful for the support of our partners, which has enabled us to graduate over 85 women and place them at dignified jobs above minimum wage," Javran said. "Our employment specialist, Nuha Ibrahim, has been working hard to find jobs for Havenly graduates, and these partnerships are a valuable resource in doing so."

One Havenly grad, Sadaf, started as parent navigator in the career bridges program at Clifford Beers, and has since been promoted to care coordinator while also studying for her master’s degree, according to Michaelangelo Palmieri of Clifford Beers. Another graduate, Fatima, also started as a parent navigator in the career bridges program.

"I'm a son of immigrants. My mother was an immigrant to New Haven from Colombia, my father and his family immigrated here from Italy in 1920," Palmieri said. "People talk about New Haven being a sanctuary city, it truly is. It's been a sanctuary city for over 100 years to my family, so when this was brought to my plate, it just made sense."

And Palmieri said, "Leaders within Clifford Beers" supported it.

"We’ve expanded now where we’ve got two more women and more with CT InCK (Integrated Care for Kids) soon," Palmieri said. "So just excited about the partnership and really appreciative of everything that they bring to our team and the diversity that they bring to our teams."

Havenly co-executive director Camila Guiza-Chavez noted that Sodexo at the University of New Haven was the café's first employment partner. She introduced Juan Dominguez from Sodexo.

"Sodexo at the University of New Haven employed someone from our first cohort back in 2019 and she’s still employed there," Guiza-Chavez said. "She loves her job, and we’ve seen how it has transformed her life and her self-confidence. Recently, she told me she was going to a picnic with her coworkers from the dining hall. Immediately, she had a position where she was able to develop her recipes and share some of her unique cuisines and skills."

Guiza-Chavez said the number of women hired by Sodexo has "multiplied."

"Not only have you been there since the beginning, but you’ve also employed the most number of women from Havenly, so we have a small department in UNH," she said. Guiza-Chavez said the women employed by Sodexo, "Always tell us they love their job, are so grateful for the job. You know that, in broader America, among the community we work with, that’s not so common."

Guiza-Chavez said Dominguez told her "Something that really speaks to me, which is that, the people at Sodexo UNH are learning more than the women from our program who have gone to work with you and we so value that mentality, it speaks so much to who you are, Juan, that you see that, because it’s a both ways process."

"The women who come here are immigrants and there are things they have to learn on how to contribute differently in this society, but this society has so much to learn from immigrants who come here from different places, and we can only benefit if the process goes both ways and we learn from each other," Guiza-Chavez said. "You said that verbatim, and we really appreciate that, so thank you."

Dominquez shared:

"What Camila just mentioned is something so natural. We hear every day, every minute of our lives, on the importance of diversity and not too long ago, learned about the word inclusion. If I had the chance, we can talk about diversity all day long, but the inclusion part needs participation, and a reaction, so when i had the opportunity to meet accidentally Camila and Havenly, they were selling their baklava at the University, and i said how about this, how about we give the opportunity to your community to work with us, learn with us. And the whole idea was for Sodexo UNH to be actively a part of Havenly’s program. With time and a little bit of resistance from the staff, believe it or not, not everyone plays the role that they should be, but it’s been an unbelievable experience of learning, learning, and more learning. So now all the resistance has changed and turned into learning. We have 8 people from Havenly now. They’re all happy, and they’re our best employees by far, in performance, customer service, and smiling all the time. It’s ironic that I’m being appreciated when I should be appreciating you and the opportunity to be where we are right now, so thank you very much."