Empower a Few that will Impact Many
When Shanghai Young Bakers was created at the end of 2008, its founders had a vision of empowering underprivileged youth through the art of French bakery. Six years and a hundred graduates later, the six months long initial project has grown into a one year program. For companies as well as NGOs, growth is often measured in terms of numbers: how much profit do you make a year? How many beneficiaries do you help? So it never comes as a surprise to me when I’m asked “Why don’t you train more students?” We do care about quantity: there is still a worrying number of young Chinese who struggle to get out of poverty, and this is why we have increased our intake of students every year, and now train staff of other NGOs to baking so that they can replicate our program while adapting it to their needs.
However at SYB we have always laid emphasis on quality over quantity: instead of providing a temporary help to thousands of disadvantaged youth, we have chosen to select 30 a year, with the objective of giving them a high-level training that will change their lives, and that of their families. We have set high standards for ourselves that have enabled our program to expand the scope of skills offered. After establishing a solid training in French bakery thanks to the expertise of Lesaffre master bakers, we integrated French pastry in our program when one of our graduates completed the EFBPA pastry training three years ago. Since then, a great number of master bakers and pastry chefs have contributed to increasing the quality of our program. Among them this month were Asian bakery expert Ouyang from Lesaffre, and cake decoration master Rosalind Chan.
Add internships, life skills and English and you get a holistic approach that makes our program unique. With the precious help of our partners, we will keep striving to provide the Young Bakers with ever more life changing training opportunities.
By Floriane, SYB program manager
帮助小众，惠及万家
当海上青焙坊于2008年末成立时，发起者们的愿景是通过法式烘焙这门艺术来帮助贫困地区的青少年获得工作技能。六年之后，海上青焙坊已经有大约一百名毕业生，原本六个月的培训时间也变成了一年。对于许多公司和NGO而言，它们的成长一般都是通过数字来衡量的，比如：你们每年能够盈利多少？有多少人从你们项目中获益？所以我并不惊讶于这个经常被问到的问题：“为什么你们项目不扩招呢？”事实上，我们的确关心数量：在中国，有待脱贫的年轻人还有很多，这也是为什么我们招收的学生逐年递增，而且我们也在教授其他NGO的工作人员烘焙，这样他们就可以效仿我们的做法来满足更多的需求。
然而在海上青焙坊，比起数量，我们更关注的是质量：我们不想为几千个贫困的儿童提供暂时性的帮助，相反，我们会每年挑选30个学员，目标是给他们提供高质量的训练以帮助他们和他们的家庭来改善生存条件。我们对自己实行着高要求，这使得我们的项目可以不断地扩大所教授的技术的广度。在来自乐斯福公司的两位烘焙大师的帮助下，我们建立了扎实的法式烘焙训练基础。当我们的一个学员三年前在法国奥里亚克烘焙学校完成了糕点进修之后，我们又将法式糕点纳入了我们的培训范畴。从那之后，越来越多的烘焙界和糕点界的大师帮助我们提高了项目的质量。比如这个月，我们欢迎了来自乐斯福公司的中式面包专家欧阳先以及惠尔通公司的蛋糕裱花大师Rosalind Chan女士来给海上青焙坊的学员们上课。
我们的课程中还加入了实习、生活技能课和英语课。这些课程使得我们的项目与众不同。在我们的合作伙伴的热心帮助之下，我们会继续努力为我们的这些年轻烘焙师们提供越来越多能够改善他们生活的培训机会。
林兰，SYB项目主管