By Jaslyn Alvarado –
Today, Philip Yan has started a coffee roaster that employs released inmates. He’s the leader of Centre for Redemptive Entrepreneurship at Tyndale University in Ontario, Canada.
But when he was a child away from his parents, being raised by his grandparents in Hong Kong, he despaired of life.
“I felt like my life was done,” Philip says. “There was no hope. It was complete darkness.”
The despair ended when he accepted Jesus at age 13.
“I found Jesus. The fact that I know that I can have freedom from all the brokenness that I had completely changed my trajectory and (gave me) hope in my life,” Philip says. “That was beautiful.”
He got his start in life in design. He’s artistic.
Eventually, he realized that he wanted to re-design lives in Jesus. He launched the Centre for Redemptive Entrepreneurship in 2021.
Their coffee shop designed to give released inmates a job, dignity and hope has been shuttered, a victim of the tough market combined with government taxation, which didn’t want to see it as a non-profit venture.
The KLINK coffee shop was named after the sound of the jailhouse door closing behind the inmates.
Yan says that 95% of released inmates fall back into a life of crime. A large part of the problem is that they can’t find jobs (and housing and other reasons). Yan’s project was to help society rehabilitate inmates, but bureaucracy brought it to an end (with the taxes).
The vision continues with mentorship and job training as a non profit.
Philip is a member of the Advisory Council of Workplace Ministry for the Lausanne Movement, a board member of the MoveIn Ministry, Canadian Centre for World Mission and Lausanne Movement Canada.
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