How does a young Chinese boy or girl go from working in a factory, to making pastries in a five star hotel? Introducing the SYB – Shanghai Young Bakers.
Shanghai Young Bakers started in 2008 as a social project. A team of 12 French friends from the French Junior Economic Chamber of Shanghai, who had been living in China for a few years, wanted to give something back to the country that had welcomed them.
Originally inspired by a bakery in Vietnam, they discovered that the market was booming in China as well, due to the rapid growth of bakeries, boulangeries and five star hotels. However, qualified bakers were still lacking, given that no formal French bakery training program existed in China thus far. Shanghai Young Bakers was consequently created in order to meet market expectations and equip the underprivileged with a much desired skill.
Initially six months long, the training now lasts one year. SYB’s one-year training combines intensive classes in French baking, with practical internships at partner companies (including several Hyatt and Marriott hotels based in Shanghai). After completing the program, the SYB students can then obtain employment opportunities in bakery shops or hotels across China. Liu Zhenzhen, a 22 year old from Henan Province, is one of 53 graduates, who was offered the opportunity through the Chi Heng Foundation, a charity with a longstanding history of effective social work in China.
“I was previously working in a factory in Guangzhou, making all kinds of products, such as energy saving lights, wiring boards etc.
“Then, the Chi Heng Foundation got in touch with me and told me about this great opportunity to learn baking. I’ve loved cakes since I was a little girl, so I expressed my interest in the program and coming to Shanghai.”
Now working at a French bakery with a view towards management, Zhenzhen recognises that the opportunity she has been given with the SYB has given her a chance that otherwise she wouldn’t have had in her life.
“My work in the south had nothing to do with technique but was purely assembly line. I was like a working machine, repeating the same movements on and on, every day. Many people from the village I lived in just returned home from the factory and got married when they reached a certain age, and I felt like my fate had been laid out for me.”
Of course Zhenzhen had considered learning some skills that she could implement to gain a head start in her career, but at the time, her family could not afford it. “The economic condition for my family when I was young was not so good. My mother passed away in 2002, leaving my dad, my elder sister and I. My father worked for a wage of little more than twenty yuan a day to support our family.”
Now, Zhenzhen has dreams of opening her own bakery, an ambition that she’d have never otherwise had, had she not enrolled in the program. “It feels like I’ve got the power to change my fate and create my own future, and be closer to my dream.”
SYB’s determination to help young adults like Zhenzhen has lead in recent months to a cooperative project with a Tibet-based NGO, Braille Without Borders (BWB). Established in 1997 by Sabriye Tenberken (a German woman who is blind herself), the BWB helps teach Braille and vocational skills to blind and visually impaired children in Tibet.
Since BWB’s philosophy and mission highly matches SYB’s – empowering marginalised youths through training that will enable them to integrate into society and lead independent lives – SYB collaborated efforts with BWB last year by welcoming Basang Lamu (pictured), a young Tibetan girl aged 20, to join SYB for one year, and then go back to BWB in Tibet to train blind students and help BWB develop their bakery shop.
Lamu comes from a poor family in the Tibetan countryside, but determinedly studied while at school and went on to work at a pharmacy, while volunteering at BWB in her spare time. She’s a shy girl and struggles with Mandarin, but through her hard work has likewise gone on to achieve skills that her peers would never have been able to do through the SYB program, and is now thinking about how to pass on the knowledge she has gained through her training.
SYB plans to send three SYB trainers, six to eight SYB students or graduates, and four staff members, along with Basang Lamu, for a ten-day trip to Tibet in July of this year, where they will visit the BWB preparatory school for the blind, and then go to Shigatse to help Basang Lamu set up the BWB bakery training. The team will advise Lamu and BWB on how to adapt the bakery training to BWB’s situation and organise a few bakery workshops for BWB staff and students.
For companies looking to make a donation, sessions are organised where each participant is paired up with a student who teaches them how to make bread.
The SYB social baking classes run every week and are open to the public and individuals who would like to learn how to make bread and professional pastries and reproduce them at home.
Shanghai Young Bakers. E-mail: communication@shanghaiyoungbakers.com.
Web: www.shanghaiyoungbakers.com
The SYB French bakery classes are now taught by three graduates from the SYB program that belonged to the first enrollment program. Based on their outstanding capabilities, SYB selected Zhang Zhenghai, Wang Li and Xiao Jinjin to study in France at the Ecole Francaise de Boulangerie d’Aurillac where they graduated with the C.A.P. (cakes and pastries) diploma. Following their return to Shanghai in August 2011, they have been teaching current students.
Wang Li
Born in Henan province, Wang Li was working at a toy factory in Guangdong before enrolling in SYB’s pilot program. She worked as an intern at Paul’s first in their bakery department, and then in pastry, and went on to further education in France.
Xiao Jinjin
Xiao Jinjin from Anhui province, completed her high school diploma before enrolling in the pilot program. She interned at Hyatt on the Bund and the Crowne Plaza as part of her training at SYB. Xiao Jinjin now specialises in pastry.
Zhang Zhenghai
Born in Shaanxi province, Zhang Zhenghai enrolled at SYB’s pilot program in 2009. He was previously working at a computer factory. During his SYB training, Zhang was an intern at Paul’s and later, at the Hilton Hotel.
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