Liesel Flashenberg

WETA Hometown Hero May 2008. Liesel Flashenberg, President of Through The Kitchen Door International inspires underserved youth, women and immigrants by using food services to improve their lives.

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Liesel Flashenberg, founder and president of the local non-profit Through The Kitchen Door International, is the May 2008 WETA Hometown Hero.

WETA selected Flashenberg for her leadership and inspiration to underserved youth, women and immigrants by using food services to improve their lives.

In 1991, Flashenberg left a successful career as a telecommunications consultant in Washington, D.C., and with her husband and three children moved to Costa Rica where she developed Through The Kitchen Door International, an organization that provides life skills and job training. After several years of running and refining successful workshops and professional training programs, Flashenberg relocated back to the United States and brought Through The Kitchen Door to the Washington, D.C., area.

Locally, Through The Kitchen Door has provided life skills and job training to hundreds of underserved children and adults. The organization’s training programs are designed to enhance and support self-esteem, self-confidence, knowledge and skills.

The program starts its trainees in a transformative one-or two-week program that teaches economical and nutritious cooking. Graduates of the program receive additional professional job training in Through The Kitchen Door’s Earning While Learning program, in which trainees are paid as they learn how to work in a commercial kitchen.

“Our training programs and catering services feed our trainees – and clients – hearts, minds and souls with more than delicious food,” Flashenberg explains. “Each dish is filled with the respect, joy and gratitude we all feel for the opportunity to work with something as elemental as food to build something as complex as a global community.”

In the five years that Through The Kitchen Door has operated locally, the program has trained more than 300 individuals and paid over $150,000 to its trainees through the sale of catering services to universities, nonprofit organizations, corporations and individuals. It has provided educational, practical and popular after-school programs for at-risk adolescents in area middle and high schools. According to a few of the educators with whom they work, Through The Kitchen Door is an after-school program where kids sneak in rather than out.

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