After almost two years of planning, a new coffee shop has opened just outside of Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus with the goal of creating a safe and empowering space for a community group of women while connecting Fordham students with local Bronx residents. 

Grounds Café, located on Hughes Ave., is the product of a recent project of Her Migrant Hub, a Fordham-based organization that aims to improve access to mental health care for migrant women in New York City. The café was created in partnership with the Grupo de Mujeres Latinas (GML), a community group of women based at the Church of Mount Carmel, as a way to build a safe and empowering space for the women and a space where Fordham students can connect with the local Bronx community. The café opened on Wednesday, Oct. 1, and will be open Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. going forward.

“We want to make sure that people are welcome into this space,” said Marciana Popescu, Ph.D., co-founder of Her Migrant Hub and Fordham Graduate School of Social Service professor. “I think the main goal of the cafe right now is to restore hope and create a place where everybody is welcomed and feels they belong, one coffee at a time.”

The idea to create the café emerged from early conversations between members of Her Migrant Hub and other female activists across New York City who have firsthand experiences with forced migration. Dana Alonzo, Ph.D., co-founder of Her Migrant Hub and a professor at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service, said these discussions centered around how to improve access to mental health care for migrant women in New York City.

“Through these discussions, one of the women that we work with said that if we really want to work to improve the conditions of women asylum seekers in New York City, [what] we should be focusing on is employability, self-sustainability, independence, integration in the community and that we should open a café where we can provide training to women, prepare them for employment and allow them to experience a sense of independence and self efficacy,” Alonzo said. 

“Her idea was to have this effort be around coffee, because every culture in the world has a tradition or a custom around coffee or tea,” Popescu added. 

Her Migrant Hub then decided to partner with the GML to provide education resources and training services to the women in the organization. As they worked with the GML, they began sharing their idea about starting the café. Popescu explained that the GML provided Her Migrant Hub with both the space for the café and the women who now work at the café. 

“It was serendipity, if you want,” said Popescu in an email to The Fordham Ram. “great minds, coming together and contributing to create this wonderful space!”

Formed in 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City, the GML focuses on preserving human dignity and empowerment by working with and supporting immigrant women in the community.

Popescu said that the creation process of the café was challenging and difficult, stating that it had “been a long road” and that “there had been some frustrations along the way.” She said that one of the biggest challenges they faced when building the café was having their two-year grant funding proposal rejected two weeks before the original four-year grant was set to expire. 

“We actually were funded for Her Migrant Hub for four years,” Popescu said. “We got amazing feedback for our work to the point where we were invited to apply for funding for another two years, which takes time … and then … we were informed that we would not get funded. There was no explanation given …  And that was very frustrating because it really pushed us back, and we had to really think outside of the box, outside of the universe, but here we are,” Popescu continued. 

However, despite the lack of funding for the project, Her Migrant Hub was still able to move forward with the creation of the café. Popescu said that a lot of the help came from their ability to receive a free space for the café, thanks to the Belmont community. Additionally, equipment for the café is fully donated and paint came from the organizers’ personal donations. The women were also able to put together a team of eight who will be paid through December. 

 “We hope that this will end up being a sustainable project,” Popescu continued. “This is why we don’t want it to depend on funding. We want to move to a place where this can be self-sustainable.”

Alonzo and Popescu have expressed that they are both excited about the café being open and have been “inspired” by the women of the GML throughout the process. For Popescu, watching the women take ownership of the café has been one of the most rewarding aspects. 

“I’m most excited to see them at work,” Popescu said. “Just seeing them today, they were talking about what their purpose is. And yes, they want to make a good coffee, but what they want, first and foremost, is that every person that enters through the door is fully welcome.”

Alonzo said her excitement is “a little more long-term directed.” She hopes the café will “transform the community” by bringing residents of the Bronx and Fordham students together while empowering the women of the café. “I think the most exciting part was seeing the women getting trained, and they’ll be starting to take ownership of it, which is exactly what we wanted to do,” Alonzo added.

For those working at the café, its opening has been just as meaningful as it was to Alonzo and Popescu. Joana Reyes, one of the first women to be staffed at the café, says that she is enjoying her position so far, and that her favorite part of the job is getting to interact with Fordham students.  

As Grounds Café enters its first stages of operation, Popescu said that its mission extends far beyond coffee. 

“It’s beautiful to see how everything that’s being talked about is not linked to coffee and business related to coffee,” Popescu said. “It’s linked to the community, and how this place can actually support hope, create hope, sustain hope in the community. It’s linked to dignity. And every woman takes pride in what they do.”