There are kids the world writes off as too much trouble and too hard to deal with.

They are shoved into a system that isn’t worried about healing them, just keeping them out of sight, out of mind.

But for one chef, instead of seeing kids who didn’t have a future, he saw men who could change the world one day.

So Chad Houser, owner of Café Momentum, went about changing their world first.

He began using his restaurant as a nonprofit training facility for kids who have been in the juvenile justice system.

The restaurant’s motto:

Eat, Drink, Change Lives.”

“This team is here to make sure you guys are successful – and that you feel like you’re being set up for success,” Houser said.

He said the idea for his nonprofit came to him teaching young men at a juvenile detention center how to make ice cream, back in 2008. 

The culinary-trained chef first got the idea in 2008 after a visit to teach several young men in juvenile detention how to make ice cream.

Chef Chad Houser, center, demonstrates food prep techniques at Café Momentum in Dallas. Photo courtesy of Café Momentum

“The moment that I met these eight young men, I felt an incredible sense of shame because I realized that I had stereotyped them,” Houser said. “I remember seeing eight bright-eyed, happy, excited young men. Every single one of them looked me in the eye when they spoke to me. Every single one of them called me ‘sir.'”

He knew he had to change something for them, for himself. “I sat down with my business partner and just said, I need to walk the talk. It’s one thing to tell these young people that you believe in them. It’s something very different to prove it.”

So, in 2015, Café Momentum opened up. And now, it helps youth like I’munique Liggens. 

“I was faced with many challenges — one of them being having to provide for my family,” Liggens, who joined the program when she was 15.

Houser’s program was a 12-month internship that paid her while she learned. This allowed her the ability to help support her family and gain new skills, and friends.

Intern Wiley speaks with Café Momentum guests at a Friday night dinner. Photo by Kathy Tran

“I felt relieved because I knew that I wasn’t the only one trying to find financial stability,” she said.

Café Momentum was more than just a job – somebody gave me a reason to keep on going.”

Education Manager Merry Watson said the program includes mental health services, as well as an in-house school.

“We built this school so that they can come here during the morning. And then when they get out of school, they go to work. We want them choosing both,” she said.

Houser has plans to take Café Momentum nationwide. He said that he has learned “more than I could ever repay them for” from all of the kids he has met through the years.

“Our young people, we use the word overcomers. To be resilient is to work through something. To overcome something is to own it,” he said. “To see them go from the labels and stereotypes that society has placed on them to becoming the individual they were born to be is really powerful to experience.”

By having the community dine in the restaurant, while the at-risk youth work there, Houser said, “empowers the community to understand that they can be the change.”

By bringing the community into the equation in helping change how at-risk youth are perceived, there can be discussion on changes needed for the future of youth justice.

“What Dallas has proven,” Houser said, “is that taking the same young people that are entering a system that is not designed to support them, or to help them achieve their full potential in life, gets the same results over and over.”

“We have built a different model that provides support, resources, opportunities, compassion, love and grace. And we’re getting very different results. And it’s not rocket science,” he said.

Watch below as Houser talks about the program and why it matters so much.

Sources: Dallas Observer | Good Morning America