By Kathy Chouteau
New Life Movement will celebrate a “Grand Opening” Friday, Feb. 28 from 4:30-6:30 p.m., with the community offered an inside view of its New Life Community Center, STEM Lab and Café. The café will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Richmond.
The nonprofit is run by Founder and Executive Director Bendrick Foster, a native of Richmond whose organization empowers youth and young adults to envision new realities for themselves and to uplift their community by cultivating their own knowledge, skills and healthy interpersonal relationships, according to its website. Foster said 50-60 youth are served per day via the organization.
The Grand Opening will give people a glimpse at the nonprofit’s Community Center, a 1,000 sq. ft. space that is a gathering place for the youth—in part, for the nonprofit’s Reactions program that teaches them about having positive behavioral interactions—and is also an option available for community use.
Also open for viewing will be the nonprofit’s STEM Lab, the epicenter of its Designer of the Year program where youth learn to make T-shirts and how to run a business. Foster said that, during the Grand Opening, the community can check out some of their phoenix logo T-shirts, the New Life cozy/hoodie and sign-up for the “hot program” if interested. The STEM Lab is also a space that the youth collaborated on to paint.
A third space that will be open during the Grand Opening will be the Café, which offers at-risk youth ages 16-24 vocational training in the culinary arts with multiple chefs. Soups, salads, loaded potatoes and sandwiches are all part of the menu mix that concurrently gives local youth a leg up on life.
Despite social, academic and professional barriers that city youth often experience due to systemic poverty and intergenerational trauma, New Life Movement looks to provide them with the tools to build and sustain a healthy, meaningful life.
“If I would have had this same type of information when I was going to school, it would have helped me,” Foster told KRON’s Live in the Bay.
Find New Life Movement’s Grand Opening inside Market Square Mall, 322 Harbour Way, Suites #7, #10 and #11, in Richmond.
