Lackey names Street Company as 2020 Nonprofit of the Year
LANCASTER — Assemblyman Tom Lackey named nonprofit Street Company as the 2020 Nonprofit of the Year.
Street Company started about three years ago as a small support group for people experiencing homelessness at Jane Reynolds Park. The nonprofit organization seeks to create jobs for homeless individuals through its coffee business.
Award recipients are typically invited to the state capitol for an annual awards ceremony and luncheon. This year’s award ceremony took place at Jane Reynolds Park due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“This recognition here is on behalf of the entire Assembly, which is 80 members that represent the entire state of California, which is close to 40 million people,” Lackey said. “So this is a really big recognition for a great accomplishment.”
He presented the framed resolution to master brewer
Marco Van den Heuvel, one of Street Company’s Founding 4 members.
“This company, we are a company that is going to be creating jobs for the homeless people,” Van den Heuvel said.
“We, ourselves are homeless or have been homeless, therefore we want to get our own people out of the situation to a point where they are self-sufficient and they can take care of themselves and they can teach others to get out of the situation.”
CEO Jesse Lee was unable to attend the ceremony.
“Three years ago, when
we gathered here we started feeding,” Director Kevin Lee, no relation to Jesse Lee, said. “But everyone had suggestions of instead of just eating something and sitting here, let’s do something together, more productive. The employment piece came into the picture.”
The group decided to create their own business and chose to start a coffee venture for their first cause.
Lackey met Jesse Lee at his office. He also encountered Street Company when they worked the same events Lackey attended prior to the pandemic.
“We needed to get together to at least recognize the success of this very unique set of circumstances,” Lackey said.
Van den Huevel and the other Founding 4 members — Bobby Edwards, Steven Wilson and Matthew Labelle — learned specialty coffee skills in Downtown Los Angeles.
They operated pop-up coffee shops at numerous government and community events, including the groundbreaking of the High Desert Mental Health Urgent Care and served at the Lancaster Farmers Market. Street Company’s next goal is to open its own coffee shop, Casters Coffee Roaster, a coffee roasting business that will hire individuals experiencing homelessness and connect them to other necessary services.
Street Company is conducting a GoFundMe fundraising campaign (https://www.gofundme.com/f/ StreetCompany) for Casters Coffee Roaster to earn support from surrounding communities. The nonprofit has a $70,000 goal. It has not raised any money toward that goal as of Monday.