by Fern Gillespie
Kalilah Moon, Executive Director and CEO of Drive Change, has spent 20 years as a workforce disruptor directing innovative social justice workforce programs that inspire young Black and Brown New Yorkers.
With the Bed-Stuy-based nonprofit Drive Change, she opens up opportunities in the culinary field for young New Yorkers of color who were caught up in the justice system. Drive Change offers training in culinary arts for 18- 25-year-olds who have been detained, arrested, sentenced to jail/prison, or placed in other alternatives to incarceration programs. Justice-involved youth are exposed to skills and careers in food and hospitality businesses through training, social support, and pathways to advance their economic situation. They get hands-on experience in the culinary field from preparing meals for restaurants to working at Drive Change’s special catering service.

“We are trying and creating opportunities for our students to have their first job or second job. But the goal is that they are working in spaces where they feel seen and heard. Not seen for their circumstances or decisions that they’ve made. We’ve chosen the hospitality industry because they are welcoming. They’re they’re more welcoming to individuals that come from marginalized and vulnerable populations,” Moon, who has headed the nonprofit for four years, told Our Time Press.

“I think that some people might not have given some of our young people a chance. I think that what we do is identify individual companies who care about getting more diverse in the industry, about providing opportunities for individuals. They realize that where they are sitting in their lives, they didn’t get there alone. So, they want to pay it forward.”

Drive Change’s New York City employer partners include: Union Square Cafe, Cafe Panna, Melba’s in Harlem, The Meat Hook, BKLYN Blend, Shake Shack, The Victoria, Porchlight and The Sylvia Center. Each training session has 15 candidates for a three-month training program. The total number of students is 60 a year. Since Drive Change was launched 12 years ago, over 74% of the graduates get jobs. Each year, over 5,000 Brooklyn families have received groceries and hot meals.

In 2024, Drive Change grew to a 4,700-square-foot office and food prep space. It is the training site and also the headquarters for Drive Change Foods, a catering nonprofit business. Also, the headquarters of the organization’s popular food truck, which is now on hiatus while being rebranded.

“The food truck helped us a lot in terms of branding, because people would see it driving down the street and get a sense of wanting to know more, because that particular truck had our mission on it. Since we don’t have our own brick-and-mortar cafe, it allowed our students to be able to practice service in action,” said Moon. “But what we’ve been doing lately is that through our catering business, our graduates have the ability to work with us on our catering events. That’s beautiful because they’re not only cooking the meals, but they’re also ambassadors of the organization.

Our nonprofit catering company, Drive Change Foods, serves as training for our current fellows. It serves as employment for our graduates, and it also serves as a vehicle to have an impact by being able to give out food to our community.”

This August, Drive Change restructured and relaunched their community food program. “We moved away from grocery giveaways to prepared hot meals,” she said. “So in our program, our current students help cook and prepare hot meals and then deliver them to individuals and residents who live in the Marcy houses. We work with the Grand Street Settlement and the Marcy Tenant Association on the meal distribution.”

Family meals and fighting food insecurity is an important mission to Drive Change. A communal meal is a daily ritual at the program. “We cook something called Family Meal every day. What we want to make sure is that our fellows never have to worry about at least one meal a day. So they can eat lunch here at Drive Change. And our culinary assistants assist with preparing,” said Moon. “So it’s really great for our current students to be able to see our graduates every day who are working here on site. Every day of the program, there’s a meal that everybody can sit down and eat. If they need to take something home, they will. We just want to make sure that people aren’t going hungry.”

Moon is a graduate of HBCU Langston University in Oklahoma, the alma mater of her parents, and holds a master’s degree in nonprofit management from The New School. She grew up in Oakland, California, and spent her childhood and teen years actively involved in after-school programs from Girls Inc to Flourish Agenda, which focused on leadership excellence and civic engagement for Black youth. At New York City nonprofits like New York Drives and The Door, she focused on workforce development, from foster youth learning resume writing to training programs for drivers license for driving careers at places like Amazon and FedEx.

“I believe that it’s really about exposure. It’s hard to believe and dream and things if you don’t see it,” she said. “So, I feel like that part of my job too is to work with young people who are coming from a lot of marginalized communities and backgrounds and helping them to be able to reach the potential that they already have inside of them.”

For information on Drive Change programs and catering, visit www.drivechangenyc.org