LEWISTON, Maine — On Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday mornings before doors open at 8 a.m., rising high school sophomore Zara Bimbi is hard at work. Despite her young age, she's the manager at the Common Grounds Café, located on Birch Street in Lewiston. So far, she has learned the job comes with a lot of responsibility, and no day ever looks quite the same.
Bimbi has been working at the coffee shop since last summer, a few months after it first opened. This isn't your normal neighborhood hang, though.
Common Grounds Café is run primarily by teenagers, like Zara, many of whom are asylum seekers and immigrants. It's a program by the nonprofit The Root Cellar, designed to create connections among different people and give teenagers work experience.
"I think the quicker we can learn as a community that we are all in this together, that we want the city to flourish and grow, the quicker we'll be able to do that together," Damon Crouse, a program coordinator with The Root Cellar, said.
Crouse said the decision to house Common Grounds Café in Lewiston was intentional. For more than a decade, diversity has been growing in that city, but it hasn't always been welcomed with open arms. There are also a lot of socioeconomic challenges.
"I noticed our community, specifically the tree streets, kind of lack[ed] an accessible café experience. We live in a low-income part of Lewiston," Crouse said.
Now, though, that is starting to change. Crouse said even the mayor and city councilmen have come to visit Common Grounds Café. He said he has been very impressed by his teenage employees, who he credits with the café's success.
"They created the mission statement," Crouse said, later adding, "Our next generation is something to look forward to. They have awesome ideas. They are driven."
"I think it's leadership, teamwork, and finding a way to understand people," Bimbi said about the skills she has taken with her from the manager role so far.
Bimbi said she had seen many of the other teenagers who work at the café at school, but she never knew them personally. This experience has changed that.
"When you meet people here, the conversations that you have sometimes you would never think you'd have conversations with them," Bimbi said. "It's really fun to get to know people in your community."
For other young people like Cley Cabral of Angola, working at Common Grounds Café has helped him learn English within a year. Cabral said now, he's working at Chipotle.
"They teach me job experience. Now, I got my job," Cabral said.
Alyssa McKay, a program manager with The Root Cellar, said the nonprofit opened originally on Munjoy Hill in 1984 and in Lewiston in 2009. McKay said The Root Cellar offers a lot of other programs for adults and kids, too, like English language learning classes, food security help, and summer day camp opportunities.
McKay has been with the nonprofit for more than a decade and said Common Grounds Café embodies The Root Cellar's mission.
"I think the first part is knowing our neighbors," McKay said. "It's really hard to love someone without knowing them."
You can learn more about The Root Cellar here. Common Grounds Café is open from 8 to 10 a.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays and from 8 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays.