Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rhonda Callahan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Rhonda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?
From September, 2010 – June, 2011, I was homeless with my 15 year old daughter, Madi. From September through May, I did everything I can to try and get us some help. What I found was that, no matter what type of organization I sought help from, I was treated disrespectfully and had to answer the same humiliating questions over and over again. I had never seen poverty from that side of the line, and I began to realize how people who perpetually live in poverty can get stuck there. You begin to feel like you really have nothing to offer to the world, and that you should just keep your head down and take whatever little bit of help you can get.
In June, 2011, I was at work and ran into a teacher friend whom I hadn’t seen all year. She commented on how tired I looked, and I told her what Madi and I were going through. A few days later, she called and told me she had some friends who wanted to talk to me. I was so utterly exhausted, and I really didn’t feel like telling my story again only to be judged by others. I forced myself to call them, and they invited me to meet them at their house. The people I met, Gil and Myrna Henderson turned out to be people who weren’t interested in judging, they were sincerely interested in me and who I was. It was the first time in those nine months that I actually felt like I was seen as a human being. After we chatted for two hours, I was getting ready to leave. They invited me into their basement, and there they had a two bedroom one bathroom apartment that was empty. They told me Madi and I could move in and live there for free until I could get on my feet.
I will never forget the first night I slept in the bed in my bedroom in that apartment. It is hard to describe how it feels to land in a place where you belong, and to know you don’t have to worry about where you might end up next. Everything turned around after that.
Rhonda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
While I was homeless and realizing the problems with how people in need were treated by those who were supposed to help them, I knew that, when/if I got things turned around, I wanted to do something to impact those in need. I wanted to get into a position where I could treat them like humans, look them in the eyes, learn their names, and show them how valuable they were. In 2012, I founded my first 501(c)3, The Torch. At The Torch, we had a food truck we could take into neighborhoods where there were large numbers of food-insecure individuals and families and we could cook and serve free hot meals. Our mission was to provide the meals with no restrictions or requirements. Nobody had to prove they were poor or give us any of their personal information to eat at our truck. We refuse to take funds from any organization that requires us to collect personal information from the people in the Torch communities. Everyone at the Torch is a volunteer, including me, to help keep our expenses as low as possible.
After we had been out with our truck for a while – I noticed a large number of individuals who had disabilities were living in the neighborhoods we were serving. I had gotten a job teaching high school students who had disabilities how to have a job, and realized that a lot of my new friends in these neighborhoods could benefit from the employability skills’ lessons I was working on with my high school students. I wanted to have an impact on that portion of the impoverished- population. In 2015, Torch 180 was born. The mission of Torch 180 is to provide inclusive opportunities for effective vocational training, soft skills, and work experience for individuals with disadvantages. We decided to focus on culinary training because we knew a lot about the foodservice industry from having our food truck.
Our first class had two students and we taught in the basement of a church. We were very limited in what we could do because we were essentially borrowing the space, so we had to be flexible enough to change up our plans on a moment’s notice if something else got scheduled in the kitchen. Those two students both were employed and continue to be employed. We then taught in Howell High School, Dansville High School, and the Livingston Educational Services Agency school. We were able to refine our course, but I knew we could teach a lot more realistic skills if we could get our own building. In 2018, we were blessed to purchase the former Fowlerville Library. We turned in into a cafe & coffee bar that the students run and is open to the public. We also offer life skills cooking courses in the building. The students gain a wealth of valuable real life industry experience. One of the biggest supports we can offer the students is the equity of time. We have three levels of programs and we give them lots of time to practice their skills through repitition, class room learning, role playing, and dealing with actual customers and co-workers. Eighty-seven percent of our students have been competitively employed when they leave the Torch 180 culinary program.
In 2022, we began the first Registered Cook’s Apprenticeship program in the state of Michigan for our advanced students. In 2023, we received our accreditation. In 2024, we were approached by Lake Trust to take a look at an historical building that had been sitting empty in downtown Fowlerville, to see if we might be able to use it to benefit the community. As I looked at it, I could visualize a retail space with students getting trained and running it. In addition, I saw space for small business entrepreneurs to rent stalls in our building and to also work with our students. Upstairs, there is an apartment that could be fully utilized as a training space for independent living skills. And in the basement is a place where we can work on STEM activities to improve employability skills. We entered into an agreement with Lake Trust – and our name is now “Torch 180, Powered by Lake Trust”. They have partnered with us on the retail space. We purchased the building, but the loan is forgivable after we have had the retail shop up and running for six months. I am proud of the fact that Torch 180 is ten years old this year, we have been so incredibly blessed, and have met so many amazing students who are now employed and remain friends!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
From the time when I was a small child, I was intelligent and fiercely independent. My parents encouraged independence and discouraged dependence. I learned that if I was going to accomplish anything, I needed to do it on my own. When I was in my early 20s, we moved from Southern California to Michigan, which isolated me from everything and everyone I had ever known. I was in an abusive relationship and very active in a church in which I couldn’t ask for help because I couldn’t admit that my marriage was anything less than perfect.
When I finally fled and became homeless, I started to learn that I had to let others into my life, and that it was okay to depend on them. As I built and grew the nonprofit organizations, I have learned completely the value of the village and how much more we can all do working together than any one of us can do working along. Particularly me!
Have you ever had to pivot?
We got our permit of occupancy for our Cafe & Coffee Bar for Torch 180 in February of 2020. Our first class began February 25, 2020. We planned a grand opening for April 25, 2020 and started working hard to train our 15 students in preparation of opening. On March 15, 2020, we were shut down for COVID. We thought it was going to be for two weeks, but that amount of time is significant, especially since we were just getting into our training. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do, and I have to admit, I was mad about it all.
But then, I started thinking about the families we served and knew from The Torch. I realized a lot of kids were not going to be getting breakfast and lunch with the schools closed. A dear friend realized the same thing and called and asked if she bought $3000 worth of groceries, could The Torch get them to people. We started rallying up volunteers and by the Monday after the shut down, we were giving away free meals and groceries to people. We brought together a bunch of volunteers and were able to serve outside from our catering truck. The local schools didn’t know how to be mobile, so they donated hundreds of pounds of groceries to us. After those two weeks, everyone realized it was going to be longer – and the schools were using their buses to deliver food. We thought things would ease up, but we were contacted by GFS. They wanted to participate in the Farm to Table program, essentially buying up food from farmers that was going to waste because restaurants were not buying anymore. They would turn the food into products and box them up for people to pick up from us. There was fresh produce, dairy, and meat every day. We would get pallets of groceries delivered in the front of our building – and the invoices were $50,000 and more. Cars would line up and we would load the boxes of groceries into their trunks. It was exhausting and exhilirating at the same time. We continued that for six weeks and, when I was so tired and felt like I couldn’t do it for one more day, GFS contacted us and said restaurants were starting to purchase again and they were ending the program. We had given away around 300,000 meals during those six weeks.
Somehow, in spite of the interruptions, and wondering if we were actually going to be able to keep Torch 180, things slowly got going -and last year, we served over 7,000 customers at the Cafe & Coffee Bar!
Contact Info:
- Website: torch180.org, themobiletorch.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/torch180, facebook.com/mobiletorch
