H.A.V.E. Fact Sheet

• H.A.V.E. is non profit registered charity and social enterprise.
• H.A.V.E. is an acronym for Hope, Action, Values and Ethics.
• It was established in 2007
• H.A.V.E. was co-founded by Amber Anderson-Executive Director/Executive Chef, Brad Mills-CEO of Mills Basics/Board Chair, Janice Mills-Accountant/Board member and Ian Tostenson-President of B.C. Food and Restaurant Association/ Board member (all Board positions are voluntary).
• It’s purpose is to provide culinary training and job placement for people with barriers to employment.
• Barriers include mental health and addiction issues, learning disabilities, English as a second language, physical disabilities, race, gender or anything that stops someone from competing on a level playing field  with the rest of society when it comes to training and employment.
• Our job placement rate is 80%.
• The biggest common denominator among our students is poverty.
• H.A.V.E. is a true social enterprise. The definition of a social enterprise is; an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well being, rather than maximising profits for external shareholders.
• We have a restaurant that is open to the public and all the food is prepared by the students. We also have a catering division that employs former H.A.V.E. graduates as catering cooks. All revenue generated by both the restaurant and the catering goes directly back into the organization to fund the program.
• To date we have trained over 700 individuals, many of whom were in receipt of income assistance.
• It costs the public $55,000 per person, per year to keep a person on income assistance.
• Our program saves the provincial government roughly $3,300,000 per year (based on 60% of our students being in receipt of income assistance at the time of enrollment )
• It costs H.A.V.E. roughly $3,500 ( true cost is closer to $5,000) to put one student through our eight week training program which includes, uniforms, breakfast and lunch daily, Food Safe level 1 certification, job placement and bus tickets to and from class.
• There is no cost to the students.
• Over half of all H.A.V.E. graduates since 2007 are still employed.
• H.A.V.E. also operates the food program for Lookout Society’s North Vancouver Homeless shelter providing 165 meals per day, 7 days a week. H.A.V.E. also provides 120 meals a day, 7 days a week to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre. We cater to many other nonprofits including: Union Gospel Mission, ACCESS to Employment, and Vancouver Native Health, and many more.
• Although H.A.V.E. and Mills Basics are two separate entities, Mills provides us with many in-kind services such as printing and marketing.
• H.A.V.E. trains one hundred plus individuals a year, works with several agencies, finds employment for it’s graduates all over Vancouver and the lower mainland and operates a full time restaurant and catering company. While H.A.V.E. has a broad scope of services, it only has 6 full time employees. They are Amber Anderson-Executive Director/Chef, Lloyd McPhee-Chef Instructor, Glenda Phillips-Assistant Instructor, Christina Boliszczuk-Executive Assistant, Robert Jamieson-Front of House Manager and Glen Lamont-Student Counsellor/Job Developer. We also employ 6 full time catering cooks between 374 Powell and Lookout North Shore.
• H.A.V.E. is the only program of it’s kind in British Columbia.
• H.A.V.E. is passionately dedicated to helping others help themselves and to eradicating poverty and homelessness.