LYNN — Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee temporarily shut down operations Thursday as a result of the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We really have not been getting the sales that we need to be sustainable right now,” said Haven Project Founder and Director Gini Mazman. “We’ve decided to focus all our efforts on expanding our job training opportunities to the young adults that we work with.”
The cafe, which opened in 2016, is a part of the larger Haven Project, which aims to aid and empower unaccompanied, homeless youth. It serves as a venue for job training and generates operating funds for nonprofit’s other programs.
“We have various services to help them find appropriate places to stay,” said Mazman. “And we provide everything from basic needs to job training programs to educational support.”
The organization provides three-week job training programs to five young adults at a time, during which they work to attain certification and get set up with full-time employment.
According to its website, The Haven Project provided jobs to 72 youths this past year.
“My favorite part of this work is the impact I can have on the clients,” said Thousand Hills Social Enterprise Manager Fredy Hincapie, a Lynn Classical graduate who has been working with The Haven Project for three years. “Planting the seed of something that might resonate with them — everything we do revolves around them.”
The Haven Project will continue its work with the homeless community in spite of the cafe’s shutdown. The nonprofit has been partnering with My Brother’s Table, a Lynn-based soup kitchen, to provide the job training opportunities that it would have otherwise been providing through the cafe.
“Honestly, I feel optimistic,” said Hincapie. “This has allowed us to start building more relationships with the community and employers that we didn’t have the time to do before — to really get creative.
“I know that this is just a temporary situation and that we will open up again. Of course it’s unfortunate that we can’t keep it running, but our passion is still there. And I think when things do go back to normal, we’re going to take this new information, these skills and make it better than it was before,” he said.
Land of a Thousand Hills is still providing catering services, and it plans to fully reopen in the spring.
“We certainly appreciate our customers,” said Mazman. “But right now we just need to focus on our core mission.”
Guthrie Scrimgeour can be reached at [email protected].
