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 Inner-City Ice Cream Makers Get Taste of Mt. Washington July 31, 2003- Behind the headlines: In 1994, The Sylvan Beach Foundation decided to create a program that could assist ex-offenders in their efforts to break the cycle of recidivism, basing the operating principles upon the highly successful entrepreneurial organization Delancey Street, run by ex-offenders in San Francisco. With start-up funding from The Abell Foundation, Sylvan Beach created a small residential program for adult ex-offenders, providing them with room and board, life skills training and involvement in revenue-producing enterprises such as boarding public buildings, landscaping and home repair. After operating for two years on a shoestring budget and experiencing the magnitude of the barriers facing adult ex-offenders, the president of Sylvan Beach decided that the focus of his all-volunteer organization would be better directed to preventing troubled youth from entering the adult correctional system. To this end, Sylvan Beach acquired a row house on Preston Street and embarked upon developing the Sylvan Beach Café and the Sylvan Beach Ice Cream Company, training and employing four young men referred by an organization working with juvenile delinquents. The youngsters live above the café, are taught basic life skills and intern as workers in the café, learning both business skills and how to manufacture and market ice cream. The manufacture of the ice cream takes place in the basement of the building. With some continued subsidy from foundations and corporations, both the café and the business have flourished. Sylvan Beach ice cream was designated Baltimore Magazine’s “Best Ice Cream” in 2002. In his goal to pursue both a financial and social return on investment, the president of Sylvan Beach Foundation has take advantage of the organization’s growing reputation for excellence, and has expanded the business and, thereby, increasing the number of troubled youngsters that can be taken into the program. When Sylvan Beach was approached by the owner/developer of a complex of buildings in Mt. Washington that houses Whole Foods (formerly known as Freshfields), Starbucks and the Framin’ Place, Sylvan Beach president approached the Foundation a second time, and was awarded a $111,000 grant enabling him to renovate a building as an Ice Cream Scoop Shop and to hire a full-time manager who also supervises the youthful workers. The shop opened this summer at 1405 Smith Avenue. In the preliminary phase of expansion, the new ice cream shop will allow Sylvan Beach to increase its current number of youth interning in the Sylvan Beach program from four to eight. The eight youngsters will live in the building on Preston Street, where the life skills curriculum and business classes are conducted. The curriculum that Sylvan Beach has developed incorporates principles from the Delancey Street Foundation: project-based learning; participant-operated business; career and ownership opportunities; high expectation and standards; earned responsibility and privilege; peer leadership and community living. Encouraged by the fact that the Starbucks coffee shop in the complex does over $1 million of business annually, plans for the longer-term expansion of the Sylvan Beach program project that the increased brand awareness resulting from the Ice Cream Scoop Shop in the complex will enable Sylvan Beach to further penetrate the wholesale ice cream markets. The sales generated from the wholesale business will provide opportunities for more young men to enroll at Sylvan Beach.
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