Finding a reliable home and sense of purpose has never been a stable proposition for Charlene Long. Growing up bouncing around California’s foster care system, Charlene, who is now 27, says she was placed in more than 25 homes growing up. She’s never known her father or mother.
Years back, Charlene found herself homeless, joining the tens of thousands of people who are a part of the historic rate of homelessness in the greater Los Angeles area. Today, the homelessness population in Southern California is skewing younger, with almost 6,000 18-to-24-year-olds on the streets of Los Angeles as of 2017 — reflecting a year-over-year increase of nearly 64%.
Charlene worked a security job to make ends meet. When she was in between jobs, she lived in the back of her Hyundai Accent GT in Compton, her future unclear.
“I’d say it toughened me up a little bit,” she tells Teen Vogue. “But I didn’t want to be defined by my homelessness. I wanted to use it to find a positive atmosphere.”
Today, Charlene’s life runs on coffee. In addition to taking general education and English courses at Pasadena City College, she’s a full-time barista at Rosebud Coffee. Rosebud is an innovative mentoring program started by Rose City Church in Pasadena that employs and trains homeless and at-risk youth to run a coffee shop, and is becoming something of a model for how Southern California communities and businesses can help address at least a portion of the area’s spiking homelessness epidemic. If you ask the staff at Rosebud, they’ll tell you that it’s “coffee with a cause.”
“The fact [that] we’re positioned with the café being sustainable to train and employ youth when the homelessness issue is at its worst, I’d say it’s timely,” Pastor Dan Davidson, the lead pastor for Rose City Church and the executive director for Rosebud Coffee, tells Teen Vogue. “In my church language, I’d say it’s in God’s timing.”
When he arrived in Pasadena in 2010 and was tasked with reopening a church that was essentially closed, Davidson, 37, was hoping to restart his career on the heels of a painful divorce. Almost immediately, he met a homeless youth sleeping outside the church on a daily basis. In the nine months that followed, he provided food, clothing, and a space for them to sleep. Soon, he says, an informal homeless enclave was developed, with tents, drum circles, and marijuana smoke becoming regular items around the church, causing the neighboring residents to complain to police.
After the group disbanded, Davidson was looking into other ways to help the homeless youth who took refuge at his church when he stumbled upon a coffee cart that was purchased by a previous pastor. The coffee industry was shifting dramatically throughout Los Angeles in 2012, with the rise of artisan flavors, but Davidson had no experience. Thanks to support and a crash course from Mike Phillips at Handsome Coffee Roasters, Davidson says he took that knowledge back to local nonprofits supporting homeless youth that soon began sending him young people to help train at the coffee cart.
“We knew training with coffee could make a difference in the homeless finding jobs,” Davidson says. “With young people being so creative, focusing on the creativity of coffee and latte art was a perfect fit since they could express themselves. That passion, and watching their transformation, is what kept us going.”
Here’s how Rosebud works: It pairs one barista to volunteer his or her time with a youth, anyone between 18 to 25, who then trains at the brick-and-mortar location for anywhere between four to six months. Through the training, Davidson says Rosebud also works with the nonprofits to help find housing units to keep his young employees off the streets and identifies other vocational training. And the initiative keeps on giving: Wild Goose Coffee Roasters, Rosebud’s distributor, donates 10 pound of food for every pound of coffee ordered.
“What Dan did was extravagant,” Charlene says. “I was homeless and had no experience being a barista. He turned it into a possibility for those who don’t have the skills to train for this job.”
To date, the program has helped train 16 homeless youths and restarted training this month, Davidson says. One of those who has gone through the program is Johnathan Tran, Rosebud Coffee’s college intern. A 22-year-old senior at Azusa Pacific University, Johnathan tells Teen Vogue that he grew up in a broken home where his dad wasn’t in the picture and his mom was an abusive addict. The situation, he says, put them at risk for homelessness, and forced him and his brothers into emergency foster care when they were in middle school.
“My mom thought it was my responsibility that the bills were due,” he recalls of the pressure placed on him. As the oldest of three boys, Johnathan raised his brothers while finishing high school, becoming the first in his family to accomplish the feat. Since then, he says he’s found meaningful relationships with members of the community who come into the coffee shop.
“What I’ve learned is that it’s really easy to provide aid to someone, but it’s another thing to develop a student,” he says. “I feel like Rosebud does a good job of providing skills and resources for these people who are in the system to better their own lives.”
“I want to continue to see that all our stories are connected in one way, shape, or form,” he says.
Things are also looking up for Charlene. The Hyundai Accent she once slept in would eventually break down and be towed, but that’s no concern to her now. Once she got some income, she moved in her with godmother. She’s currently renting a room nearby and taking classes twice a week, hoping to one day become a veterinarian. Charlene says the opportunity at Rosebud has given her a sense of purpose she didn’t think was possible throughout much of her life.
“I’m good now, but it’s always been up and down,” she says of her journey. “My life has been a difficult reminder of where I came from and where I am now.”
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Related: Meet the Afro-Indigenous Girl Whose Non-Profit Is Helping Homeless Communities
