For the past couple of years, Off The Block has celebrated every winter holiday season with pizza and salsa holiday gift boxes, and they are back again this year with the addition of a cookie holiday box as well.
While Mentoring Positives, the organization behind Off The Block, has been in Madison for quite a while serving the Darbo-Worthington neighborhood especially, it was just last spring that their Off The Block pizza and salsa making program was able to find a storefront home on E. Washington St. with Muriel’s Place. Will Green, executive director at Mentoring Positives, is happy with how it’s going so far, and he and the team have been figuring out how to best use the space to its full potential.
“Quite honestly, I didn’t want it to be this full fledged restaurant where I’d have to manage all these restaurant staff and things like that,” Green told Madison365. “It was really a youth focused space that I wanted. The community has been coming in and supporting, grabbing products, and we got the salsa now at Woodman’s about a month and a half ago, so that was cool. We’ve just been thinking about unique ways to program the space.”
One of the recent expansions into other areas came with Muriel’s Plate where Mentoring Positive youth had the experience to run a series of Tuesday dinner services guided by locals in the Madison food scene, such as Chef Ben Hunter and Chistine Ameigh. Green makes it a specific point to include the kids in each step of the business from sourcing the ingredients, to making the product, and then navigating the range of business knowledge needed to bring it to market.
“I think we just try to put a plan together for the kids and think about all the aspects of the business … Really, the kids love people interaction. I think that’s what people really got to understand. They want to be busy, they want to be serving people, and they want to be in front of people,” said Green, explaining how Muriel’s Place also helps connect the Mentoring Positives kids with the people buying the food, something community members highly value.
“It’s really not about the products. That’s the whole thing to our program, the hook is the key. I used basketball as the hook, and now I got another playground with the kitchen as the hook,” Green said. “We teach skills through those enrichment programs, but we really want the kids to just be real good people, working on their socio-emotional makeup.”
Much like Green wants the kids to feel connected to and part of the community, he also expressed how the kitchen functions similarly to a basketball court, in that success is often brought through teamwork and executing a strategic plan. These are the kinds of lessons Green brings through Mentoring Positives that he hopes will apply to any skill or path that their youth pursue, and bringing kids to check out spaces like concert venues, home decor companies, and even the zoo expose the range of possibilities one has at a young age.
“I want to give the kids a lot of touch points, because they have no idea,” Green explained. “You just never know what you’re gonna spark in them, and that’s the beauty of it because a lot of kids just don’t know. They think they do, but they just don’t know. I think we do a good job of putting the kids on the stage and letting them perform. Giving them the opportunity to connect with people that they might not be able to connect with all the time. I just think about all the things I didn’t have when I was a kid, and just trying to enhance the kids’ lives through those connections and things that we have for the program.”
Muriel’s Place will be open this week from Monday the 18th to Thursday the 21st from 11am to 7pm for pickups of any holiday boxes. Sales support Mentoring Positives both financially and practically by providing experience to kids. Holiday boxes this year include a pizza box for meat lovers and a vegetarian pizza box, both coming with five pizzas inside, along with the salsa boxes with 12 jars of mild or spicy salsa, and a new one-pound cookie box containing 12-15 chocolate chip cookies.
Green was sure to give gratitude for all their supporters and funders with recent support in the form of grants from both the Evjue Foundation and Widen Family Foundation being the latest success Mentoring Positives has had in continuing their crucial community work.
“The community needs to know, a good cause never tasted so good,” guaranteed Green. “You’ve got these kids putting that love into the products. When people purchase the products and products go out the door, the kids get to work. We keep kids working and moving around, not just standing around. That’s how the community can help, so it’s a win win for everybody. Not only are you making a purchase, and getting a good product, you are helping us mentor and serve kids. It’s just all around a good benefit for everyone.”
To learn more about Off The Block and order for pickup, visit their website here.
