More Good News:

A second employee, Evon Nano, originally from Iraq, recent grad from the Genesis Center Culinary Arts Program, and (here’s the sad part) my right-hand woman in the Providence Granola Project has found a job.She is now working at the CAV, a very trendy, upscale restaurant in the jewelry district.The job is part-time, but 4 days a week. Knowing how hard Evon works, I’m sure they’ll expand her hours.

As my father likes to say, you can’t beat that with a stick.I’ve been so impressed by Evon and was already handing over some of the training and supervision to her, when she showed up at my office with a sheepish grin on her face.“Teacher, I’m so sorry…” she said.

We’re not sorry.We celebrated by hiring two more refugees, one from Bhutan, the other from Burundi, and both preliterate, without any education in their home country.It was a slightly rocky start:both showed up wearing higher heels than is ideal for a 6 hour standing shift.And some of our labels were put on upside-down (I’m leaving them just the way they are as a tribute to us doing our best).But they went home with their first paycheck ever, and the granola came out better than ever.We’ll feature a picture of Man and Zera as soon as I can take one.

We’ve had some good press this month in RI Monthly’s e-newsletter, The Dish.With a few more retailers expressing interest, things are moving along.So dive deep in your bowla’. If you want a fancy night out, consider the CAV, and say hi to their salad chef for us.

Thanks, as always, to our faithful granola friends for making all this possible.