Sharing Food and a Future
At Just Bakery, new Americans who arrived as refugees create new lives together.
In order to protect the privacy of the bakers, first names only are used in this article.
By midmorning, work is well underway in the cramped kitchen of Just Bakery. A cranky air conditioner struggles unsuccessfully against summer temperatures and hot ovens, but the bakers don’t seem to mind. The mouthwatering aromas of baking scones fill the room: peach-ginger, lemon-thyme, and the savory ones, cheddar-scallion.
At one end of a long butcher-block counter, a woman named Ganga methodically transforms a soccer-ball-sized blob of dough into a sheet, gliding her hands over the rolling pin from her fingertips to the heels of her hands, back and forth, back and forth. When she deems the dough flat enough, she will paint it with butter, add a generous layer of cinnamon and sugar, curl it into a long cylinder, and cut it into slices to be baked as cinnamon rolls.
On the other end of the counter, two women, San and another woman, also named Ganga, turn big pans of risen multigrain dough into smaller loaves to bake.
Sisto, the only man on duty, moves around the kitchen from one job to another, sliding large flat pans of scones and gluten-free cookies into the oven, washing dishes, and fetching supplies. His red T-shirt bears the message “Eat Well, Do Good, Change Lives.”
That’s the motto of the bakery, a nonprofit business housed behind the sanctuary building of the former Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, now Memorial Drive Ministries. It was founded four years ago by the Rev. Leah Lonsbury, a graduate of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, to help refugees learn a trade, become professionally certified, and earn a living wage.
Just Bakery is one of the social entrepreneurships lifted up by First Presbyterian’s Epiphany project, a grant and mentoring program to support businesses that address community needs, foster human capacity and dignity, and promote individual economic empowerment.
Leah Lonsbury, top, founded Just Bakery, which employs Sisto, bottom left, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nem, from Myanmar.
“I’ve always loved feeding people,” said Lonsbury. “It always seemed like a sacred act to me. I’ve wanted to work at the crossroads of feeding people and making change my whole adult life.”
Living in Madison, Wisconsin, she encountered a bakery that was a free, short-term, educational job training program for people released from prison. “While their programming is different than ours, it was my inspiration,” she said. “This was the first time I got to see up close an organization using the marketplace creatively to make change and serve the community. Social entrepreneurship suits how I want to be in the world and helps build the Beloved Community.”
The immigrant component of Lonsbury’s vision came into the picture when she was working as a teacher in DeKalb County’s Cross Keys High School. Located near the Buford Highway corridor, home to many refugees and immigrants, the school claims to have the most diverse student body of any Georgia high school. Lonsbury also helped settle refugees through her congregation, Oakhurst Baptist Church.
“I love the people I work with. They are like my second family. I feel safe and comfortable to express myself.”
SISTO
Oakhurst Baptist is part of the Alliance of Baptists, a group of about 140 congregations that distinguishes itself by its inclusiveness, similar to First Presbyterian, in acceptance of women and LGBTQ people in leadership positions. When Oakhurst was given a donation to fund an initiative that would serve a vulnerable population, Lonsbury applied with establishing Just Bakery in mind. She was awarded the entire amount of the Oakhurst grant—$38,000.
Just Bakery now employs eight new Americans. Head baker Bhima recently left to have her first child, but since she started her job at Just Bakery in 2017, she has been able to buy a house and a car. Several others have passed through and gone on to other kinds of jobs. Education is encouraged and accommodated. Of the crew working this Friday morning, one of the Gangas is studying to be a dental hygienist; the other is working on an associate degree. Sisto is studying fashion design, and when San is not baking bread or mixing the M&M-, peanut butter-, and chocolate-chip-filled “monster cookies’’ at Just Bakery, she is working toward a double major in religion/social justice and political science at Agnes Scott College. She chose Agnes Scott because she thought the women’s college “would help me become more powerful as a woman.”
“Monster cookies” and scones are among Just Bakery’s specialty products.
Lonsbury said that she has been impressed with each baker and all they bring to the business—San, who often sings while she works, and Sisto, who is full of humor. “Our crew is funny and charming,” said Lonsbury. “It’s impressive to see eight people from different countries create a family over the common experience of food.” She said each baker has shown tenacity, wisdom, and strength. “Really what we do at Just Bakery is open doors. They blow right through them and build lives in this new country.”
In some ways, Lonsbury has learned right alongside the bakers. She had never run a business before, and most employees had never baked—especially for American tastes—before being hired. “The bakers think Americans are obsessed with cheese and chocolate,” Lonsbury says. She encourages each of them to try new recipes with flavors from their past, such as Nepalese shortbread. (They add extra sugar to satisfy America’s sweet tooth.)
The two Gangas are ethnically Nepalese, as is former head baker Bhima. Their families were among tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalese who were living in Bhutan in the early 1990s when the Bhutanese military began torturing, killing, and expelling the Nepalese. Many, including the families of the Just Bakery bakers, fled to Nepal, where they lived for years in refugee camps before being resettled in the United States.
San is from Myanmar, formerly Burma, where her family was among a Christian minority in a primarily Buddhist nation. Both Muslims and Christians encountered persecution in the 1990s under a new governmental department formed to promote Buddhism. The military occupied predominantly Christian areas and destroyed churches and crosses, sometimes using the forced labor of Christians. When San’s father went to find work in Malaysia, her mother was left at home with five children, and San gathered and sold firewood to help support the family. After about ten years in Malaysia, her father sought asylum in the United States and resettled in Clarkston. With the help of the International Rescue Committee, his family was able to join him.
“I’ve always loved feeding people. It always seemed like a sacred act to me.”
LEAH LONSBURY
Sisto is from the Congo, where at the age of five, he witnessed the murder of his father by an opposing Congolese faction. His mother fled to South Africa, taking Sisto and his sister, but he said the same people tracked them down and killed his mother. He and his sister made their way to Uganda, where they lived as refugees with little food or fresh water. He came to Atlanta in 2015, and in 2017, when Just Bakery was just getting started, he was hired.
Asked what he likes about working there, Sisto says, “To be honest, I love everything. I love the people I work with. They are like my second family. I feel safe and comfortable to express myself. And when you bake stuff and people appreciate what you’re doing, that makes me so happy.”
The next morning, he is behind a table laden with baked goods in the parking lot of Oakhurst Market in the city of Decatur. Customers are lined up outside the Just Bakery tent, while some other vendors are idle.
“Their bread is the best in town,” said one woman.
“And their cheddar scones are amazing!” said another. “Sometimes they sell out, so I try to get here early.”
A man praises both the food and the mission of the bakery. “It’s an outstanding enterprise,” he said.
Every baked good is made from scratch under the Just Bakery motto: “Eat well. Do good. Change lives.”
For now, the goods are mostly available at local markets around DeKalb and Fulton Counties and through online sales. Lonsbury dreams of expanding to a storefront location, where people can sit and visit while they enjoy their food or stop in for baked goods on the way to work or home.
Along with more space would come work for more refugees. Sisto said he will be there to encourage them. He is now confident in the kitchen and the sales tent, but he said he learned by experience.
He laughs heartily when he recalls his first day on the job. He dumped a container of flour into a mixer that was running at high speed, causing what seemed like a snowstorm in the kitchen. He said he will show new bakers-to-be a photo of himself covered in flour and say, “This is how you learn.”
Then, he said, perhaps reflecting on his journey from the Congo as well as his early experience in the Just Bakery kitchen, “I have come so far.”
