Across the street from the Weston Station, where commuters catch the UP Express, sits a low-slung building painted a bright shade of blue.

It sits alone, separate from the beauty parlours and nail salons on one side and the Toronto Community Housing highrise on the other. The name “Frontlines” is emblazoned below the roofline. At the front door, there’s a doorbell.

For the last six weeks, since late April, Sherese Jesuorobo has been coming here each morning.

At 25, she was seeking a kind, welcoming community and a fresh start. As others before her have, Jesuorobo found it here. She entered the culinary training program that meets five days a week and teaches people between the ages of 18 and 29 food safety, chopping skills, menu design, organization and recipe creation on “Walk-it-out Wednesdays.”

Sitting beside the big window that overlooks Weston Rd., Jesuorobo talks about her connection to the community, the negativity she felt after her brother, Mike James, was shot and killed here nearly 10 years ago, and, now, the new purpose she has found through the Frontlines program.

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James worked as an apprentice chef at Woodbine racetrack. After learning of his death, his coworkers wept. His executive chef said James showed talent and dedication.

“They have a lot of good energy here,” Jesuorobo says. “Even though I’m from here (Weston), it could have been kind of weird and awkward, because I didn’t know anybody, but this isn’t the kind of place where you are an outsider; there was automatically a family feel from the time I walked in.”

Frontlines has been a presence since 1987 in Weston, a neighbourhood that has long struggled with poverty. It started as as a drop-in centre inside a local church, a safe place for young people to hang out, play pool or play drums. Over the years Frontlines evolved and found its own space on Weston Rd., just south of Lawrence Ave.

Today, it offers summer camps for children, a leadership program for teens along with after-school programs with exercise and computers for homework, plus a hot evening meal, cooked by the culinary students.

Feeding hungry kids has always been a part of Frontlines’ programming, says Stachen Frederick, the centre’s executive director.

“Food has always been a staple …,” Frederick says.

“We know a lot of young people from this community. They come from single parent families. They come from low-income families. And their dinner is an issue.

“I had one grandmother recently who came up to me and asked me if she could get two onions from our kitchen. I just went to the back and grabbed a whole (bag.) Because you understand that it is more than just two onions. It is bigger,” she says.

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Children are taught how to prepare meals, such as sandwiches or salads with chopped chicken on top. In the culinary program, for young adults, students come from across the Toronto region to train and get help with job placements. Restaurants in the community, such as Zeal Burgers, support the students, Frederick says.

Before Jeffrey Osbourne took the program in 2017, he was thinking of returning to his home in Jamaica, where he had worked as a cook, making meals such as rice and peas, jerk chicken, curries, oxtail and callaloo rice.

“That is all I used to cook,” Osbourne says, “so I opened up myself to learn the Canadian menu, too. Back home, we didn’t cook anything like Shepherd’s Pie.”

On a class visit to the Weston Golf and Country Club, Osbourne says he told the head chef, “It must feel good to be leading a kitchen like this.”

The chef, he said, told him to work hard and he, too, will have similar opportunities.

“And I said to him, I would like a chance to be working in an envrionment like this, because I have never worked in a professional kitchen like this before. He said he was going to have some of us come in and cook. He said ‘If you are good, we will hire you.’ ”

Osbourne got the job. He has learned how to cook for different tastes, with fewer spices, although he said the Weston kitchen is now offering curry.

A few months after Osbourne started working, Frontline’s Frederick asked him to come back in his spare time and teach the new culinary students.

Jesuorobo is one of his students. She wants to cook vegetarian food, she says, with a focus on vegan desserts.

“I have a sweet tooth,” she says, laughing. “I like the vegan and vegetarian side of it. Eating to live. Eating to survive, not just filling a hole in your heart.”