- Overview
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This is an essay about young adults and adolescents maturing into adulthood while working in the restaurant industry.
- Book Intro
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This book is a record of adolescents and young adults in their late teens and early twenties maturing into adulthood while working at Cats on a Picnic, a box-lunch restaurant. Through their stories, readers can gain insight into the meaning of social independence and what our society is failing to see.
Cats on a Picnic is a restaurant run by about ten people, ranging from teenagers/young adults to adults. Rather than simply working part-time, young workers have the option to own company stock and work independently as part-owners. While conducting an "alchemy project as part of a career education course at Haja Center, Park Jinsook, the author, feels the need for young people to work independently and mature by taking ownership of their lives. This is how she came to establish a social enterprise and open Cats on a Picnic.
Cats on a Picnic, which has already been in business for seven years, employs adolescents and young adults between the ages 18 to 24 who cooperate to create a workplace where non-college graduates are welcome. Although they've experienced numerous trials and tribulations as well as twists and turns, work and education gradually found peaceful harmony. Those ignorant about living life as workers were reborn as dignified members of society.
So, what are the answers to the questions these young people have been asking for years? These young people learned the values of patience, listening, and support in a workplace of mutual growth: to teach the basics and wait until the lessons are mastered; to ask questions and take notes when problems arise; and to consider individuality and provide assistance when needed.
This book contains the stories of growing pains that members of Cats on a Picnic persevered through as well as accounts of the daily lives of those who supported them. Through these accounts, readers will gain a real sense of self-reliance that young people can attain through work and expand their horizons regarding alternative methods of education for young people.
- About the Author
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Park Jinsook
Park Jinsook graduated from Korea University and the graduate school of Seoul National University with degrees in French Language and Literature and received the MA with her thesis, "Studies of Cultural Identities of Refugee Family" from Yonsei University. Park has become a teacher as she taught Korean in French to Congolese women refugees. In 2009 with the women refugees, Park established EcoFemme, a civil organization that continues to promote dignified jobs for women and hygiene products. Books Park has written include My Name Is Yombi (co-authorship).
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