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Teach a man to fish ...

Early edition

By ALISA ULFERTS
Published December 19, 2006

Rodnick Moore, left, admires his graduation certificate along with Alton McKinnon at the St. Vincent DePaul Employment Project graduation exercise on Tuesday. Moore, 55, is one of four graduates in the first culinary class at St. Vincent DePaul's kitchen in St. Petersburg. Moore, a homeless Vietnam veteran, was hired full time as a sous chef for St. Vincent DePaul. McKinnon was hired as a cook at the Don Cesar.

[Times photo: Lara Cerri]

ST. PETERSBURG — Rodnick Moore is no stranger to sensory gratification, though he’s paid for it along the way.

Early in life he developed a taste for drink. Later, crack cocaine provided a virtual vacation from the mind-stripping monotony of prison.

But that was several surrenders to God ago, and now the Vietnam veteran has abandoned illicit pursuits in favor of a single savory one: food.

“My biggest joy, besides my children, is my cooking,” said Moore, 55. “I like the expressions on the faces of people when they eat my food.”

Moore graduated Tuesday evening with nine classmates from an 18-week employment training program at St. Vincent de Paul shelter, the only one of its kind in Pinellas County that focuses exclusively on helping the homeless develop skills to get the jobs they need to keep them off the streets.

The main chef at the center saw Moore’s work in the kitchen and offered him a job. Now Moore prepares meals like chicken in peanut sauce for the hungry at the shelter.  

Advocates for the homeless say employment preparation is frequently overlooked, even though it’s the one thing that can lead to the most permanent change.

Indeed, a recent state audit suggested that both the state Office on Homelessness and local advocate agencies and municipalities could do more to help get the homeless enrolled in programs like the one at St. Vincent de Paul.

“If you don’t give them the job skills, a way to improve where they’ve been, they’ll never get to be self-sufficient,” said program director Bob Yakubisin.

Yakubinisin started the program with a $248,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. He took a leave of absence from his job as an employment executive to get the program off the ground.

In addition to the culinary class, which had four graduates Tuesday night, six people graduated from the paralegal training classes. There also is a class on resume preparation and interviewing skills.

“You have to teach people how to work and what the employer wants,” Yakubinsin.

He has helped another culinary graduates find work with the Don CeSar Beach Resort. Yakubinsin said he’s trying to help the paralegal graduates find work with the legal services agencies that provide legal help to the poor.

The keynote speaker Tuesday evening was St. Petersburg City Councilman James Bennett.

“We hope you will stay in St. Pete, because now you are taxpayers,” he joked with the graduates.

The program aims to help the homeless who, like Moore, are in transition. Because he is a veteran, Moore qualifies for a bed in the homeless veteran’s dormitory at the Bay Pines VA Medical Center. Moore said he hopes to save up enough money to get his own apartment in a few weeks.

He says he owes his newfound success to St. Vincent and to God.

“This is my greatest moment, next to my children,” said the father of five daughters. He says it feels good to have fought his way out of the morass of drugs and back to himself.

“If it weren’t for God I wouldn’t have made it.”

[Last modified December 19, 2006, 21:51:06]