Alumna Uses Café to Combat Gangs in SF

Westmont alumna Teresa (Moore) Goines ’97 and members of Old Skool Café, a supper club/internship program, launched by Goines to help neighborhood youth avoid gangs, drugs and crime, will speak at several college events Feb. 9-11. The event, which celebrates Black History Month, is sponsored by Westmont’s Black Student Union and San Francisco Urban, an off-campus Westmont program in San Francisco, featuring vocationally-oriented internships and study in urban issues, such as human trafficking and homelessness.

Goines will talk about her unique program and SF Urban at an informational meeting Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 6:30 p.m. in Founder’s Dining Room. On Thursday, Feb. 11, she’ll be joined by several young members of Old Skool Café and SF Urban alumni from 3-5 p.m. in Monroe Dining Room to discuss the imperatives of diversity experiences for a full and integrated college education in a talk, “No Longer Color Blind.”

Old Skool Café, which was recognized by the FBI with the 2009 Director’s Service Award, was launched in 2005 by Goines, a former corrections officer who has worked with gang-affiliated boys and girls for more than a decade. Through working with incarcerated youth, she realized filling jails was not solving the root causes driving young people to gangs, crime, and violence. As a result, she conceived Old Skool Café as a way to teach at-risk kids job and life skills, build within them a sense of responsibility, and pave their way out of poverty and hopelessness. Addressing the fact that high crime rates go hand in hand with unemployment, Old Skool Café draws youth from all over San Francisco and engages them in learning experiences which give them solid, realistic alternatives to lives of crime and poverty.

“This is just one great example that shows how one purposeful and visionary Westmont grad can make a difference in the lives of people in desperate need in San Francisco’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods,” says Scott McClelland, director of Westmont’s Urban Program.