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Lessons in Fusion” speaks to the fluidity of Jewish identity in the contemporary world

Primrose Mayadag Knazan
cover of “Lessons in Fusion:

Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN In preparing to write this review I searched our archives to see whether we had ever published anything previously about Primrose Mayadag Knazan; sad to say, we hadn’t.

It’s about time we made up for that oversight, as Primrose had already established herself as a playwright of considerable talent, having had her three plays been awarded “Best of Fest” at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival on each occasion she premiered a new play at the Fringe.

Her plays have also been produced by the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, and Sarsavati Productions.
With “Lessons in Fusion”, Primrose enters into the world of fiction writing and, while the book is described as a “Young Adult” novel – not being a young adult myself, I wondered whether I would be as interested in this particular book as much as someone who was in their teens.
It turns out that “Lessons in Fusion” would hardly be limited in its appeal to young readers. As someone who has blended two different cultures in her own life: Filipino and Jewish, Primrose Mayadag Knazan offers readers who might come from a more traditional background tremendous insight into identity, how it is forged over time, and the challenges faced by individuals who, because of the way they look, are stereotyped by others.

The storyline of “Lessons in Fusion” takes place in the pandemic world in which we all now find ourselves, although the action moves back and forth in time as we begin to develop a better understanding of the novel’s protagonist, 16-year-old Sarah Dayan-Abad.
Sarah is a precocious young woman who has developed a keen fascination for “fusion” cooking – blending ingredients from different cultures to create dishes that are an amalgam so totally original they lead to her developing quite a following on a blog she had started when she was 14 years old, titled “fusiononaplate”.

Here is how she describes her blog, when asked to give some information about it by the creators of a new online cooking show in which Sarah would like to participate: “Fusion comfort food, a mash-up of East and West and everything in between. Easy recipes of our classic cravings with a twist.”
Now, given Sarah’s interest in food, one would ordinarily expect that is something she might have inherited from her mother, Grace, who is “Filipinx” (the proper term for someone of Filipino descent, we are told, rather than “Filipino”). Grace, however, has almost no interest at all in cooking, especially Filipino food. The reasons for that become clearer as the story develops.

The reviews that I’ve read of “Lessons in Fusion” to date all make a big fuss over how the author introduces each chapter in the book with a recipe. Apparently Primose Mayadag Knazan is quite the food connoisseur, writing a regular column for the Filipino Journal about food in Winnipeg, as well as maintaining an Instagram account devoted to food,@pegonaplate.

As the story unfolds, Sarah is accepted into a competition known as “Cyber Chef”, in which five young people – all under 20, will compete on a weekly basis until only one is left. By the way, the chapter in which the competition is explained in some detail starts with a recipe for Chanukah latkes, so if this review is just a tad too late to influence your latke recipe, you might want to consider buying the book for next year. Just consider some of the ingredients in Sarah’s latke recipe: “sweet potatoes instead of russets. Instead of traditional sour cream or applesauce…raita made with yogurt, green apple, and mint” – I think you get the idea why the book is titled “Lessons in Fusion”.
Now, I’ll be honest: I barely looked at the recipes in this book, although they seemed tantalizing enough. Yet, for anyone who’s really into cooking, I’m sure the recipes in the book would be reason enough to buy it, as many of them are traditional Jewish recipes turned into something so imaginatively different from what I think most of us have come to accept that we would have a hard time recognizing them.
But, more than the recipes and the fastidious attention to food details that the book incorporates, “Lessons in Fusion” is a coming of age story that is so contemporary in its being set during the pandemic that it offers many real life lessons which can be useful for all of us.

Sarah, for instance, is a good student, yet she’s been forced into online learning as a result of the pandemic. Cooking is a diversion for her – as it had become for so many others once we found ourselves being confined to our homes during the many lockdowns that characterized the first year of the pandemic. While she has two good friends, with whom she communicates online (and you have to appreciate how thoroughly the author is familiar with what is known as “textspeak”), we can still appreciate the extent to which the pandemic has truncated what should have been some of the best parts of young people’s lives.
I don’t want to go into any further detail about the cooking show in which Sarah participates, lest I spoil any surprises for readers.
What I was most interested in reading is how Sarah develops her identity as a Jewish Filipinx. She and her siblings all attend what is described as a “Hebrew Immersion program” in a “private school”, where the students wear uniforms, so I’m assuming it’s based on Gray Academy. Sarah has had a bat mitzvah and is quite proud of her being Jewish.
Yet, beyond her interest in Jewish food, what seems to drive Sarah’s Jewish identity more than anything is her closeness to her baba. At the same time though, the book does describe Sarah’s more tenuous relationship with her Filipinx grandmother, her “lola”, and how cooking also brings the two of them together eventually.

One aspect of the book that might serve as a wake-up call for some readers is how Sarah is stereotyped because of her appearance and, although she can understand how she is regarded by almost anyone she meets (including online) as Filipinx, she herself regards her identity as first and foremost Jewish.
At one point Sarah is asked whether she considers herself “White or Filipino”?
She answers: “Jewish” – to which the questioner responds: “That wasn’t my question.”
So Sarah launches into a more detailed explanation: “But that’s what I am. My parents are Jewish. (Grace had converted when she married Sarah’s father.) I was raised Jewish. It’s not just my religion. It’s my culture. I get all the jokes. I celebrate the holidays. I eat and cook all the food. I even speak some Yiddish. I had family that died in the Holocaust. Go back far enough, I had family that were chased out of Russia. It’s in my blood. I carry it on my shoulders. I. Am . Jewish.”
That exchange goes on, with the questioner insisting on finding out whether Sarah identifies as “White” or not, and with Sarah not sure how to answer the question.

As someone who has been writing extensively about identity in this newspaper, and how much Jewish identity is evolving so rapidly as more and more individuals who have either converted to Judaism or live with someone who is Jewish bring with them backgrounds that are not Jewish, I find it quite fascinating to read a quite authentic description of how confusing it must be for a young person who comes from a blend of ethnic identities when asked to explain their own identity.
For that reason alone I would recommend “Lessons in Fusion” as a real eye opener to so many in our community – and well beyond the Jewish community, in helping to understand how someone might identify strongly as Jewish even when that person’s identity is rooted in a background that is quite different than something with which many of us are familiar.

As for how well written “Lessons in Fusion” is, as a first-time novelist, Primrose Mayadag Knazan shows remarkable talent, although given her success as a playwright to date, it should come as no surprise that she has made the transition to fiction writing so successfully.

“Lessons in Fusion”
By Primrose Mayadag Knazan
Published by Great Plains Publishing , 2021
288 pages

 

More about Primrose Mayadag Knazan

Primrose Madayag Knazan brings an interesting perspective to what it means to become Jewish
By BERNIE BELLAN
As someone who had already established a solid reputation as a successful playwright, Primrose Madayag Knazan knew that she was taking on a challenge of quite a different sort when a publisher proposed that she consider writing a book of fiction aimed at the Young Adult market.
“Writing plays was easier than writing a novel,” Primrose told me during the course of a lengthy phone interview.
“But Great Plains (her publisher) approached me with the idea of writing a book. They said I’ve always been so successful with plays, why don’t I write something – either non fiction or Young Adult?”

 

The timing was right for her to begin thinking about writing a book, she says. It was the fall of 2020, the Covid pandemic had set in, and she actually had more time to write since she was working from home. Her two young boys were both in school and, while she was certainly busy enough – she had begun writing a food blog as well as writing a regular column for the Filipino Journal about food, Primrose says that she didn’t have any plays in the works, so the idea of writing a book at that time appealed to her.
Around the same time, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis happened, Primrose notes. “It opened people’s eyes about diversity and representation.”
So, the idea of tackling those themes, along with her passion for writing about food, jelled into the basis of “Lessons in Fusion”.
As I explain in my review of the book, the story centres around 16-year-old Sarah Dayan-Abad. The fact that Sarah’s name is a blend of Jewish and Filipino names is no coincidence. And yet, while there are distinct parallels in Sarah’s life to Primrose’s, Primrose wanted to make clear that Sarah is largely an imagined character.
Having grown up in Winnipeg herself, Primrose says that, while she was raised Catholic, she didn’t find the Catholic church appealing.
“I grew up at a time when I didn’t fit in with other Filipino kids,” she says.
For instance, she notes that she “always wanted to be a blonde. I knew a part of me always wanted to be White.”
At the same time, she says that “ever since I was a kid, I wanted to write plays, books, poetry.

 

It was while she was in university here – where she was taking a double major in psychology and sociology, that she also had her first immersion in theatre. Primrose says she fell in love with the theatre and, years after she graduated, she became involved in it again, as an actor, as a producer, and as a playwright.
Her first plays were written for Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival (the first one was written in 2000) and each time she entered a new play there (three times altogether), her plays went on to win “Best of Fest”.
It was also while she was in university that she met the man who would eventually become her husband, Josh Knazan.
Yet, while Josh came from a firm Ashkenazie Jewish background, he didn’t insist that Primrose convert to Judaism before they married.
“It was after he proposed to me that I told him I wanted to convert to Judaism – not before,” Primrose explains.
Ever since converting – in 2002, under Rabbi Alan Green’s tutelage, Primrose says that she has become “very comfortable in being a part of the Jewish community.”
“Judaism is such a beautiful religion that I fell in love with it. With Catholicism there are no shades of gray. Everything is black and white. Judaism is so much more nuanced.”
“I’m an outgoing person,” she says. “I’ve been able to be involved in the synagogue (Shaarey Zedek). I have a lot of new friends.”
And, while Primrose says that she has made sure that her two kids will grow up in a Jewish milieu – her older son was just recently Bar Mitzvahed, she says, the notion of “fusing” Filipino and Jewish culture is something that she is keenly interested in doing.

The story in “Lessons in Fusion” centres around food – and not just Filipino or Jewish food.
Raising two boys, especially one who was now a teenager, did give Primrose a certain insight into how young people think – and how they communicate, especially through texting.
Portions of “Lessons in Fusion” have some of the young characters texting with each other. “When I showed it to my son, he told me that I had it all wrong. No one texts in full words,” he said. “I had to learn textspeak from him.”
Something that Primrose wanted to avoid though, in writing a Young Adult novel, was “writing anything dystopian”. She says that she didn’t want to write yet one more book about “the end of the world”.
At the same time that she wanted to tackle issues of “diversity and representation” in her book, Primrose says that her older son was an “inspiration” for her when he told her he “didn’t want to read ‘issue books’ or books about ‘racism’.”
And, while Primrose and Josh are determined to give their two boys a solid Jewish upbringing, they both want them to be exposed to Filipino culture as well, Primrose says.
“They were both in the Hebrew Bilingual program at Brock Corydon” – the older boy has now graduated and is at Grant Park, but they’re both also involved in “Filipino dance”.
Unlike the character Sarah in “Lessons in Fusion”, moreover, who does not have a close relationship with her Filipino relatives – save one aunt, Primrose and Josh’s boys have close relationships with both their Jewish and Filipino relatives.
Sarah, however, identifies entirely as Jewish. The idea of creating a character who, even though she looks Filipino, doesn’t think of herself as Filipino at all, came to Primrose when she herself wondered what she would have been like had she been “raised exclusively Jewish”?

As noted, Primrose has a real passion for food – experimenting with it, writing about it and, as she explained to me, helping to promote local Filipino restaurants and stores.
“My head is focused on food blogging and promoting Filipino food,” she says.
“But when the pandemic happened,” so many restaurants had to close down, including many Filipino ones, she observes. So, her blog and column in the Filipino Journal became even more important to Primrose. She says that “in the past two years I’ve taken the food blogging seriously. I’ve always wanted to feature Manitoba products” as a way of helping local producers.
And, while “Lessons in Fusion” is largely a coming of age novel, as Sarah participates in an extremely demanding competition where she is required to come up with entirely original recipes for a TV show on a weekly basis, Primrose observes that “the growth in Sarah’s recipes parallels the growth in Sarah as a person to the point where she blends her two cultures” – and feels wholly comfortable in both.
That’s also the story of Primrose Madayag Knazan’s life: Someone who feels totally comfortable in her own skin as she blends Filipino and Jewish cultures into a unique amalgam. And, for someone who is as interested in identity as I am – and how fluid it is, having Primrose as part of the Jewish community offers one more reason why other members of our community should feel warm in the knowledge that the Jewish community is a blend of cultures and one in which people of quite different backgrounds can feel totally accepted.

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Ida and the late Saul Alpern have donated 2 ambulances and a scooter to Magen David Adom in past 4 years

Saul z"l and Ida Alpern

By BERNIE BELLAN Saul Alpern passed away in 2022, but before he died he and his wife Ida had decided to make Magen David Adom a major recipient of their generosity.

As Myron Love noted in an October 2020 article the Alperns had been contributing small amounts to the Canadian Magen David Adom for some time, but it was in that year they decided to donate $160,000 for the purchase of a Mobile Intensive Care Unit for Israel’s Magen David Adom.

As Myron wrote in that 2020 article, an MICUA (which is larger than an ambulance, is staffed by paramedics, and responds only to the most medically serious cases) was donated “to the people of Israel in memory of Saul Alpern’s parents and siblings who perished in the Holocaust.

“It is an expression of my love for my family and my love of Israel,” Saul Alpern said at the time.

In early 2022 the Alperns donated yet another $170,000 for the purchase of a second MICU for Magen David Adom.

The scooter recently donated by Ida Alpern in memory of her late husband and parents/plaque imprinted on the front of the scooter carrier box

Saul Alpern passed away in November 2022, but Ida Alpern has now continued the legacy of giving to Canadian Magen David Adom that she and Saul had begun several years before. Just recently Ida contributed $39,000 toward the purchase of an emergency medical scooter. According to the CMDA website, “the scooter, which is driven by a paramedic, can get through traffic faster than the Standard Ambulance or MICU and provide pre-hospital care. It contains life-saving equipment, including a defibrillator, an oxygen tank, and other essential medical equipment.”

I asked Ida whether she wanted to say anything about the motivation for her and her late husband’s support for CMDA. She wrote, “Having survived the Holocaust, and being a Zionist, Saul felt that supporting Israel was of the utmost importance.”

On May 7, CMDA will be honouring Ida and Saul z”l Alpern at a dinner and show at the Centro Caboto Centre. Another highlight that evening will be the announcement of the purchase of an ambulance for CMDA by another Winnipegger, Ruth Ann Borenstein. That ambulance will be in honour of Ruth’s late parents, Gertrude and Harry Mitchell. The evening will also commemorate the late Yoram East (aka Hamizrachi), who was a well-known figure both in Israel and here in Winnipeg.

For more information about the May 7 event or to purchase tickets phone 587-435-5808 or email sfraiman@cmdai.org

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Simkin Centre looking for volunteers

A scene from last year's Simkin Stroll

We received the following email from Heather Blackman, Simkin Centre Director of Volunteers & Resident Experience:

Happy Spring Everyone! Hope you all are well. We have a number of upcoming volunteer opportunities that I wanted to share with you. Please take a look at what we have listed here and let me know if you are available for any of the following. I can be reached at heather.blackman@simkincentre.ca or 204-589-9008.
Save the date! The Simkin Stroll is on June 25th this year and we need tons of volunteers to assist. This is our annual fundraiser and there is something for everyone to help with from walking with Residents in the Stroll to manning booths and tables, event set up and take down and much more. Volunteers will be needed from 3 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on this day. Come and help for the full event or for any period within that timeframe that works for you.
Resident Store – This tuck shop style cart will be up for business shortly. Residents will be assisting to stock and run the store for 2 hours 2- 3 times per week in the afternoons. Volunteer support is needed to assist residents with restocking items and monetary transactions.
Passover Volunteers
Volunteers are needed to assist with plating Seder plates for Residents (date to be determined for plating)
Volunteers are needed to assist Residents to and from Passover Services and Come and Go Teas.
Times volunteers are needed for services/teas:
April 22cnd – First Seder 1:30-3:30 p.m.
April 23rd – Passover Service Day 1 – 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
April 23rd – Second Seder – 1:30-3:30 p.m.
April 24th – Passover Service – Day 2 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
April 29th – Passover Service – 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
April 29th- Passover Tea – 1:30-3:30 p.m.
April 30th – Passover Service – 9:30 -11:30 a.m.
April 30th – Passover Tea – 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Admin/Paperwork Volunteers – Volunteers are needed to assist with filing and other administrative duties. A monthly volunteering job is also available to input information on programming into Recreation activity calendars. Support would be provided for this.
Adult Day Program – A volunteer is needed to assist with the Mondays Adult Day Program Group. A regular ongoing weekly commitment on Mondays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Assist with Recreation programming and lunch supervision for our Adult Day Program participants that come in from the community for the day.
Biking Volunteers – Take our residents out for a spin on one of our specialty mobility bicycles. Training is provided and volunteers will be needed throughout the Spring, Summer and early Fall.

With summer coming there is also opportunity to assist with outings and other outdoor programming! Please let me know if you are interested!

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From Argentina to Winnipeg – creating opportunities in the IT sector for marginalized groups

By BERNIE BELLAN The following article about Pablo Listingart borrows heavily from articles written by Rebeca Kuropatwa in 2019 and 2021 for The Jewish Post & News. It is also based on a recent phone interview I conducted with Pablo, as well as material we received from a publicist.
Back in 2012, husband and wife, Pablo Listingart and Solange Flomin began seriously thinking about leaving Argentina.
This, explained Listingart, was “because of the political situation and other aspects [that] were degrading. We also wanted to have the experience of living in another country.”
So, the couple began traveling to explore other countries. They went to the U.S., but did not feel it was a good fit. Then, they went to several countries in Europe, but with a similar result.
Next up was Canada. “My wife had a cousin living in Vancouver and she spoke really highly about Canada,” said Listingart. “We started doing our research and sent emails to several Jewish communities. A couple answered, but communication with Winnipeg was more responsive.”
In October 2013 Listingart visited Winnipeg (while Flomin was pregnant with their first child). “After only two days, I fell in love with the city, the brown of the trees, how quiet it was,” said Listingart. “So, I called Sol and told her that this was the place.”
When Listingart returned to Argentina, he and Flomin started working on their application. The process took 10 months, as their son was born in the middle of the process.
The family made their move to Winnipeg in early March 2015.
Flomin and Listingart feel at home in Winnipeg. “We feel more Canadian than Argentinean, with cultures, values, and everything,” said Listingart. “That is the reason we are here, actually. We did not come for economic reasons. We didn’t feel that comfortable in terms of values and principles back there. Once I came here, I fell in love with the Canadian culture and values.”

Listingart had started up a charity in Argentina in 2011 that taught participants how to do software development. In Winnipeg, Flomin urged him to create the same kind of start up.
Today, Listingart’s charities, called Comunidad IT & ComIT, have operations in Latin America and Canada.
As an immigrant himself, Pablo explains that he started ComIT after immigrating from Argentina to Manitoba and seeing a gap in Canada’s education system. He noticed many individuals working survival jobs to help support their families, unable to get the training they wanted to better their positions.

In response, he developed a market-driven curriculum that he initially delivered to students by covering expenses himself. In 2016, Pablo Listingart became the founder and executive director of ComIT, a Canadian non-profit organization that offers free technology and professional skills training to unemployed and underemployed Canadians, with a focus on Indigenous, immigrants, visible minorities, and underserved communities. The charity aims to develop a community that links people struggling to overcome employment barriers with companies looking for skilled workers.
Women take up the majority of his enrolment. Many of them feel they can’t enter into a traditional program to enhance their educational skills due to barriers like limited access to funding, training locations, professional requirements, also family obligations, and lack of childcare. ComIT’s curriculum is designed to appeal to people who fall into that category by being free of charge, available online, and taught for only parts of the day.

Listingart and Flomin began running the charity together around raising their two kids.
“I had worked for several companies, like Microsoft, IBM, and others,” said Listingart. “Back in 2011, I thought about giving back to the community and society, and so I decided to start this charity. Those years back in Argentina were kind of busy and, with all the political issues over there, we decided to migrate here to Winnipeg.”
With the perpetually expanding operation of their growing charity, Listingart, as the charity’s executive director, was kept busy, and for the first few years of operating ComIT he even found time to build mobile applications and websites, but these days Listingart says that running ComIT takes up his full time.

ComIT in Canada began by running pilot programs in Winnipeg and in Kitchener-Waterloo. In Winnipeg, Listingart ran the classes with the support of ICTAM (now TechMB), and, in Kitchener-Waterloo, two of the main Canadian sponsors were Communitech and Google.
“That went really well, in terms of people getting jobs, so I kept doing it,” said Listingart. ComIT jumped from offering two courses to 22 courses per year – covering all the Canadian territory.
By 2023 Comunidad IT and ComIT had helped 4500 people find jobs (1200 in Canada). “Unfortunately,” Listingart explained, “people drop out for different reasons through the process, so we are not able to help everyone who joins the courses.” During our phone interview Listingart said that his charities have now trained over 6,500 students altogether.
“About 70 percent get jobs within six months of the training,” said Listingart. “We follow up with them, help them with their resumés…We have a free platform companies can access and see the resumés.”
Training is conducted in classrooms and online. “The impact is always bigger in person”, said Listingart. “We started developing content to be delivered online prior to the pandemic, mostly for Latin America, as a way to reach people we couldn’t physically reach, not having the funds to go to 15 countries, and then during the pandemic we developed even more content to continue running our training.”
While Listingart would love to be able to operate everywhere around the world, financially, that is not yet viable, but he was able to expand what he offers to all of Latin America and across Canada.

Listingart is no longer teaching in the program, due to a lack of time, though he does visit the classes when he is able. While only two years ago, ComIT was training 300 people a year in its courses in Canada, it has now grown to the point where 600 people a year are taking courses from ComIT.
As Listingart told me, “We actually doubled the number of students we had when I talked to Rebecca (in 2021). What happened, he explained, was “we were in the middle of the pandemic and we moved all the training online due to COVID. We are still running courses online, and that has allowed us to reach out to more people.”
“So nowadays we have students from Prince Edward Island to the Yukon,” Listingart added.
I asked Listingart where the funding for ComIT comes from?
He answered that most of it comes from the private sector, but a portion comes from a federal government agency known as PrairiesCan.
So, how exactly does ComIT conduct classes? I wondered.
Training is conducted by instructors in classrooms or online, where they reach their students via Zoom.
At ComIT, all training is provided free of charge. Trainees can hold a full-time job, while training in the evenings or mornings for only a couple of hours a day for three months.
While right now ComIT is conducting eight different classes, Listingart explained,\ – “with eight different instructors,” because “we run different topics along the year, it’s usually between 12 to 15 people that get involved in teaching courses.”
And what do students learn in those courses?
The program consists of three months of intensive instruction in various fields related to software programming.
“Most of the people that we train go on to be programmers,” Listingart said, adding that the majority of our graduates become software developers or website designers,” adding that “some are working in cybersecurity or other hardware related fields.”
The minimum age to register for a ComIT program is only 18 and there is no prerequisite level of education required.
While a good many of ComIT students are immigrants who may lack the kind of English language skills necessary to be hired by many employers, ComIT also has many Indigenous students as well as non-indigenous Canadians who are struggling.
Still, as Listingart says, students in the program have to be able to communicate. They “don’t need perfect English,” he adds, “they don’t even need a mid-level English,” but they do need “some basic communication skills.”
But it’s not simply a matter of someone applying to take ComIT courses and being automatically accepted, Listingart explained.
“We ask them (prospective students) a lot of questions,” he said. “We ask them what their goals are, like, if they are pursuing a career in IT or if they are interested in that… many things to gauge their interest. Those conversations help us understand whether these people can communicate with others.”
When it comes to finding jobs for graduates of the ComIT program, Listingart says that he and other members of his team meet with local employers who are looking for IT talent and discuss their exact needs within the industry.”
“We train them in what companies need right now,” said Listingart. “So, let’s say I go to Saskatoon and I talk to 10 or 15 companies over there…about 70 percent get jobs within six months of the training,” he noted. “We follow up with them, help them with their resumés…We have a free platform companies can access and see the resumés.”
Skip the Dishes, for instance, was on the fence for a very short time. They hired five out of seven ComIT trainees almost on the spot after they were interviewed – and soon after, the company became one of the charity’s local sponsors. To date, Skip the Dishes has hired 55 ComIT-trained students.
“My goal, so to speak…is to give opportunity to people who can’t afford other types of training and give them a first chance,” said Listingart. “We mention this at the beginning of every course. They only have one chance with us. We don’t give second chances. If they drop out for any reason, regret it, and want to come back, they can’t. I have hundreds of people on the waiting list to take courses. For me, this is a way to teach the value of work and, while doing it, you have the chance to work a job that pays well, that you can grow and learn…And, it’s not just for nerds, it’s creative work.
“My goal also has been to make the biggest impact that I can and …I’m happy with the results.”
If you are an employer interested in finding out more about ComIT or you know someone who might benefit by taking the program, visit

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