2000 - 2002 |
Social entrepreneur Farhana Huq founds the nonprofit Creating Economic Opportunities for Women (C.E.O. Women) to champion low-income immigrant and refugee women entrepreneurs through teaching English, communications and business skills as a workforce development strategy. Based in Oakland, California, C.E.O. Women's programs were designed to amplify women's strengths and assets, and to address structural inequities helping women overcome barriers to language, education, transportation, childcare and access to capital.
Farhana starts by organizing a series of pilot training programs teaching English and entrepreneurship skills to immigrant and refugee women in San Francisco's East Bay. She receives a $1,000 seed grant from philanthropist Lata Krishnan as a start. She hobbles together curriculum using a combination of English Language Learning (ELL) concepts and existing entrepreneurship training curriculum to pilot teach classes in collaboration with community-based organizations and public education institutions in Berkeley and Oakland. Frustrated at the lack of a good curriculum addressing the need for English skills development and practical application to business start-up, she begins extensive research to figure out a solution. Among the many educational models researched, she learns about an ELL program piloted by the Marin Literacy Program called RadioWorks!, a broadcast telenovela (soap opera) designed to teach migrant laborers in remote areas basic survival skills English over the radio. The program even installed satellites on barns so that people could tune into the show and learn English through a culturally relevant, storytelling format. Inspired by this distance learning model and understanding the importance of in-person touch points in learning, Farhana starts to conceive of a telenovela series about immigrant women and their adventures in starting their own businesses. Believing in the power of media, storytelling and technology to help women overcome barriers such as transportation, childcare and language access, she envisions to create a story that educates and inspires, and where the characters model real life situations and challenges of the immigrant and refugee women served by C.E.O. Women's programs. |
2003 - 2005
|
Based on the outcomes, student and instructor feedback of the pilot trainings, C.E.O. Women raises $25,000 to begin developing an ELL for entrepreneurship classroom training and curriculum. Classes are delivered in collaboration with the ESL department at Oakland Adult and Career Education in Oakland, CA under the leadership of then Principal and C.E.O. Women Advisor Brigitte Marshall.
Classes are co-taught by C.E.O. Women consultants, Oakland Adult and Career Education ESL teachers and founding C.E.O. Women staff member, Kate Hamilton. The curriculum and programs are revised based on extensive evaluation, student and instructor feedback. |
2006
|
C.E.O. Women receives a grant to expand the curriculum creative team. They hire instructional designer Angelica Matsuno and local, award-winning poet Nina Serrano to develop an 18-episode blended learning telenovela series based on C.E.O. Women's already successful classroom business training program. As the telenovela centers its story around a café where all the characters meet, the series is appropriately named Grand Café.
|
2007
|
|
2008
|
Heide Spruck Wrigley, Ph.D. joins as an advisor to Grand Café.
|
2009
|
C.E.O. Women raises $325,000 for the series catapulting the project to its next level of development. They re-hire Media Factory to help produce episodes 1-6 of Grand Café using an all-female of color producer, director and director of photography team. All episodes are filmed in Oakland, California. A distribution model and strategy for Grand Café is collaboratively developed by C.E.O. Women program staff Anita Dharapurum and Elinor Mattern, Founder Farhana Huq and Grand Café strategic technology advisors Radha Basu and Craig Chatterton with input from students and teachers.
Pictures from filming of episodes 1-6. |
2010
|
Grand Café's first episodes are distributed via DVD and accompanying workbooks to aspiring immigrant women entrepreneurs in their home via U.S. mail as a first step in testing a blended learning model.
|
2011 -
|
C.E.O. Women closes due to funding shortages. Grand Café sits and collects dust. :(
|
2022
|
Farhana sees the potential for the series and more efficient distribution models due to the advancement of technology and the normalization and cultural adoption of distance-based education in a post Covid world. She reconvenes with Co-Producer Angelica Matsuno and a former C.E.O. Women advisor and educator, Josette Molloy, and starts to revive the series.
|
2023 |
Farhana uploads episode 1 on Youtube and shares it with LINCS, a national leadership initiative of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) to expand evidence-based practice in the field of adult education. The program is well received by English educators around the country who suggest creating a website where educators can access the content.
Grand Café is rebranded to Grand Café English and Farhana starts developing the Grand Café English website based on the feedback. |
2024
|
Grand Café English website is launched. Grand Café English is featured in ProLiteracy's 2024 Adult Education resource publication. Adult literacy programs around the U.S. begin using Grand Café English in their ELL programs.
As of 2025, Grand Café is being implemented in ELL programs in libraries, nonprofits and adult schools in California, New Jersey, Illinois, Montana and Ohio. That's the history. Let's see what the future holds for Grand Café English! |