Working On Faith

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 15, 1999 | by Aimee Howd

Faith-based organizations in some local communities are teaming up with federal and state programs to help welfare clients get and keep jobs in the private sector.

The congregation of Payne Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church has transformed a nondescript office building in a sagging section of midtown Baltimore into a bustling one-stop opportunity shop for families in need of assistance.

Push through the swinging glass doors and slip past the receptionist as Paulina Bolding does one day and you might encounter a group of teen-agers plotting a marketing strategy for a new clothing line financed by microbusiness grants they earned in a job-training program. You may see adults digging into reading lessons or GED prep work, a culinary-arts class baking huge platters of chicken for a gathering in the banquet hall or schoolchildren chatting with adult mentors.

Bolding's high-heeled boots click down the glossy halls as she joins a cluster of women on the second floor being coached in personal presentation for job interviews. Any picture she has of the American Dream is a faded one framed with hypodermic needles, bullet casings and generations of welfare checks. But for the sake of herself, the age- and alcohol-ravaged mother she is supporting and especially the 4-year-old son she is raising, Bolding is determined to find a job she can turn into a career. "I don't want him to think that life is just the 'hood" she says to another woman.

Job counselor Robert Smith examines the letter of referral from the Department of Social Services Bolding pulls from her bag. She was here once before and was offered employment as a security guard. That fell through, though, she explains, when a combination of high risk, low pay and harassment sent her stalking off the job. Smith chides her for not sticking it out but sits down patiently beside her to go over readmittance paperwork. Soon Bolding is back in the program.

Private support for the Payne Memorial Outreach, or PMO, faithbased program has come from local organizations and businesses for pragmatic reasons: They have a stake in revitalizing the community. But what puts PMO on the cutting edge of a new era in American social-service policy is its pioneering role as one of a small but growing number of faith-based organizations, or FBOs, around the country that are winning public funding for their work.

In 1997, PMO responded to a state request for proposal. It competed as an Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization to win a $1.5 million contract with the Maryland Department of Social Services to provide job placement and support to clients who needed to start earning an income before the deadlines imposed by national welfare-reform legislation in 1996 dried up their benefits.

The reputation of PMO had been established by the congregation's dedication to revitalizing its community. When the Rev. Vashti Mackenzie came to lead Payne Memorial in 1990, she urged her congregants to do what they could to take back the neighborhood streets from drug dealers and poverty. Soon they were feeding 5,000 people a month. "I said we can continue to do this or we can help people get jobs so they can get food for themselves," Mackenzie recalls. The congregation crafted a comprehensive plan to serve the spiritual, educational, economic and community needs evident on all sides.

Under direction of Marilyn Aklin and Denise Harper, two members of the congregation who have backgrounds in business, bureaucracy and social work, PMO grew from a one-room outreach center to a sophisticated network of services. They were ready for the government contract when it came.

The Baltimore cash-assistance caseload was spread among 14 different vendors on a pay-for-performance basis. Most would work with clients who fit a certain profile, but PMO, the only FBO, agreed to do what it took to find a job for any person who needed work, regardless of his or her barriers to employment. About 40 percent of those who come to PMO don't have a high-school diploma and need intensive remedial work before they can obtain any but the lowest-paying jobs.

And welfare-to-work recipients must work while they receive training. Like everyone else entering PMO's intensive Job Service Program, or JSP, Bolding signs a contract to follow up any job leads PMO provides and to accept the first offer of employment she receives, even if it is not in her field of interest and regardless of pay. The goal is to find a job within six weeks and hold it for 13 weeks, the standard workplace probationary period, to establish a positive work ethic. When that is accomplished the JSP will work with her to ensure at least six months of sustained employment. She looks indifferently through the help-wanted ads Smith hands her.

"Miss Bolding, what do you see in the employment ads that you can do?" he asks. She shakes her head. "I've got - I've got common sense. There's probably lots of things I can do that I don't know I can do." This wins an empathetic chuckle from the other clients in the room who know the challenge of building a resume on nothing but that. "I want to get my GED [general education diploma]," she continues, and her face grows animated. "I want to care for the elderly, be a geriatric aid. But I can't get certified without my GED."