New Avenue Foundation’s story began in 2013 when our 501(c)(3) public charity was formed. Our mission is to help create more meaningful lives for people with disabilities through innovative social, employment and housing programs. After a couple of years, we eliminated working on housing because it was very complicated. Back in 2019, we started to work on finding jobs for people with disabilities. We ran the New Avenue Cafe at the Kelly Center in Havertown from July 2019 to December 2022 when it closed. We did train and employ people with disabilities.

We had already been working on the idea of roasting our own coffee. In 2020, we started Our Community Cup Coffee, a social enterprise in micro coffee roasting, as an extension of Our Community Cup Coffeehouse, a successful PAY WHAT YOU CAN social and music venue now in its 10th year. It was started primarily for families and caregivers of people with disabilities, but we welcome everyone. Our Community Cup Coffee began to help train and provide jobs for people with different abilities. Did you know that between 75 and 85% of people with disabilities are either unemployed or under-employed.

Finding competitive employment in businesses like financial organizations, software companies and large businesses is very difficult and only supplies limited job opportunities for a certain portion of people with disabilities. This is a start but what about those who have limited skills and can still be a valuable part of a community. We know our kids can make a difference if only given the chance. We did employ 2 individuals for our first year, but quickly saw this caused us to loose money every money. So, employment stopped in 2021-22. We still provide training and accept volunteers to help roast coffee.