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Story Highlights

In Their Words

Meet Our Neighbors

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  Ali and Tina Darweesh

  Owners of King’s #1 Family Restaurant

  Ali Darweesh opened King’s #1 Family Restaurant in 1990, inspired to provide Halal soul food and “down home Southern cooking” in Newark. His restaurant opened with 20 seats, and since then, has grown to seat over 150 as a Newark staple that feeds everyone from local families to city mayors. The Darweeshes collaborated with Newark Working Kitchens during the holiday season to serve festive meals for community members in need. Tina explains that cooking for the community has kept their staff employed and their doors open, saying that “without you guys, we wouldn’t have been able to survive”.

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  Cazorla and Saleme

  Artists in the Newark Artist Collaboration

  Cazorla and Saleme are a Venezuelan aunt and niece artist team, who began making art together in 2010. Their work often focuses on immigrant issues to shed light on topics surrounding undocumented and working class immigrants. The duo has been awarded commissions from New York to Philadelphia to Berlin, and was selected by the Newark Artist Collaboration to create an inspiring installation at the Newark Public Library, where children play and families and the community come together. The duo notes that “the city opened its arms to two women artists of color. Newark has been a remarkable source of inspiration and progress for us. We became who we are now thanks to the opportunities, support, and community we found in Newark.”

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  Walter Green

  Owner/Operator Uncle Willie’s Wings

  When Walter Green was hospitalized with Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic, he was forced to shutter his brand-new restaurant, Uncle Willie’s. Once he recovered, he hosted a free barbecue for the neighborhood as a way of saying farewell to his business. But joining forces with Newark Working Kitchens allowed him to reopen his doors and make hundreds of meals weekly to feed the Newark community. He’d been making food deliveries in a van with more than 130,000 miles on it when his story caught the attention of the “Today Show,” which bought him a new van to help him continue the amazing work.

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  Rebecca Perry

  Head of Adult Literacy, National Literacy Trust, UK

  As part of her work for the UK’s National Literacy Trust, Rebecca Perry heads up Inside Stories with Audible, an effort to bring audio storytelling to young people in prison. She works with organizations like Audible and National Prison Radio to host podcast-making sessions for young people in settings like Feltham Young Offenders Institution, helping them develop technical skills they can use in future careers, as well as improving their communication, literacy, and confidence. Her strategy includes arranging for young people to interview others who have been in their shoes and turned their lives around, which helps them to envision and plan their own paths forward.