• October 5, 2026 | IGNITE

  Ignite Newsletter: 2026 October

  By Tristyn, Café Momentum Ambassador Fellow  October is Youth Justice Action Month (YJAM), and this year’s theme is “Building a Future Where Youth Thrive.” That phrase means something different to me now than it would have when I was moving through the system myself, back when thriving felt like a word reserved for other people. […]

• October 1, 2026 | Atlanta

  EAT, DRINK AND CHANGE LIVES

  The Department of Juvenile Justice and a casual fine dining restaurant seem to have little in common, but teens 15 to 19 who have been released from the system are defying the odds at Café Momentum. The Department of Juvenile Justice and a casual fine dining restaurant seem to have little in common, but teens […]

• September 8, 2026 | IGNITE

  Ignite Newsletter: 2026 September

  By Tristyn, Café Momentum Ambassador Fellow  This month, we turn toward reentry support, a theme that lives at the center of everything Café Momentum does through its case management model. I remember what it felt like to walk out of Dallas County Juvenile Detention and realize that surviving inside the system and rebuilding a life […]

• August 5, 2026 | IGNITE

  Ignite Newsletter: 2026 August

  By Tristyn, Café Momentum Ambassador Fellow  This month, we turn toward restorative justice, a practice I wish younger me had found sooner. When I think back to the different points where I moved through the system, accountability meant something narrow: a charge, a room, a number attached to a case file. It never asked me […]

• July 23, 2026 | Dallas

  Cafe Momentum Receives Grant from the Jacques Pepin Foundation

  By: Steven Doyle Source link: https://cravedfw.com/2026/07/17/cafe-momentum-receives-grant-from-the-jacques-pepin-foundation/ Café Momentum just picked up a $10,000 grant from the Jacques Pépin Foundation, one of ten organizations nationwide chosen for the foundation’s Summer 2026 round of funding. The Dallas restaurant is the only Texas recipient on the list this time around. For a restaurant that runs on paid internships for justice-involved […]

• July 8, 2026 | IGNITE

  Ignite Newsletter: 2026 July

  By Tristyn, Café Momentum Ambassador Fellow There’s something nobody prepares you for about returning home, truly returning, not just stepping through a doorway. It’s the burden of proving your worth in a world that already judged you before you arrived. I know that burden intimately. I’ve dragged it into job interviews, into meetings with hiring […]

• June 16, 2026 | Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Pittsburgh

  Chef Chad Houser Is Helping Formerly Incarcerated Teens Gain Opportunity—And Momentum

  by Derek Rose Source link: https://time.com/collection/visionaries/2026/chad-houser/ In 2025, chef Chad Houser, founder and CEO of Café Momentum, was driving in his home city of Dallas when he received a call that made it difficult to focus on the road. On the other end was Dawn Padmore, vice president of awards at the James Beard Foundation, who […]

• June 3, 2026 | IGNITE

  Ignite Newsletter: 2026 June

  By Tristyn, Café Momentum Ambassador Fellow There is a conversation that does not get nearly enough airtime, and this month we are making space for it. Economic opportunity. Not as a talking point or a policy footnote but as something deeply personal. I have felt both its presence and its absence, and both have changed […]

• May 29, 2026 | Atlanta

  Atlanta nonprofit cafe serves up hope and opportunity for justice-involved youth and young adults

  Cafe Momentum Atlanta is a nonprofit serving up good food while changing the lives of youth and young adults who have had direct contact with the juvenile justice system. The nonprofit opened its doors in May of 2025. Since then, they’ve had 46 participants, also called interns, come through the program. Twelve more recently started. […]

• May 7, 2026 | IGNITE

  Ignite Newsletter: 2026 May

  By Tristyn, Café Momentum Ambassador Fellow  This month, we are making space for a conversation around mental health. After spending my childhood navigating systems that were quick to address what I had done but slow to ask how I was doing, I adamantly believe that mental health is not a side conversation to be taken […]

• May 4, 2026 | Dallas

  Wraparound Supports, Untapped Talent and the Conditions for Thriving

  On April 19 in Dallas, the SHRM Foundation, in partnership with Big Thought, convened a small, intentionally mixed group of leaders at Café Momentum for a dinner conversation on what it actually takes to help people not just access work, but thrive within it. The gathering was part of the SHRM Foundation’s Tharseo Exchange series, […]

• May 4, 2026 | Atlanta

  Cafe Momentum cooks up career development program for youth

  Sandy Welfare, executive director of Cafe Momentum Atlanta, and James Brashears III, general manager. Byron E. Small By Crystal Edmonson – Senior Editor, Atlanta Business Chronicle Read more: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2026/05/04/cafe-momentum-youth-workforce-development.html