A Learn & Earn Program
At My Father’s House, we work with 41 homeless families. We provide housing (both shelter and transitional) educational classes, family counseling meetings, one-on-one case management, childcare, food and clothing shopping opportunity, office spaces and a computer lab. Our main goal is to stop the cycle of homelessness and promote independence and an opportunity for families to provide for themselves.
The Need:
One of our biggest hurdles in working with homeless families is job readiness. Many times a young dad or mom will find a job just to lose it in a few days or weeks. This causes confusion, depression and hopelessness. When asked why they were let go, most of them aren’t really sure. This makes for a difficult situation in assisting our residents in how to be a good employee and how to handle themselves on the job. Finding employment for the homeless is the first step in home recovery and sustainability. My Father’s House goal is to provide housing alongside a job training center. This addresses not only their homelessness but also their need for job skills in order for them to come to a place where they can achieve success.
The Jobs Education Solution:
We are very fortunate to have many donors who supply our residents with gently used clothing, shoes and necessities they need. In fact, we have so many donations we simply cannot use them all. We’re running out of space. This is why joining our job training center with a store is the ideal solution. Our residents can learn work ethics and soft skills while getting paid to learn and work. They will participate in on-going classroom education as well as work in the store, coffee shop and night security. Learning job skills, people skills, and basic skills we sometimes take for granted. The jobs program will be completely sustainable by the sale of goods donated to My Father’s House.
In our Jobs Program we want to create a place where we can grow and train our families to be hard working, reliable employees. Teaching them responsibility, honesty, time management and job skills. Through community gifts and grant applications we will build the new building. This successful outcome will be for our residents to find employment and learn how to support their families.
This project also has a second benefit. It’s for My Father’s House to have sustainable income. Even while paying our trainees in the thrift store, we will be able to utilize our excess donations by selling these donated items. Chase Me Again has been supporting MFH for several years now and has become so successful they can no longer accept our abundance of clothing, furniture, household goods, etc. This means, we giveaway our excess to other thrift stores who do not support us nor do they give us any monetary benefit. We could be utilizing these donations as support for our program and families.
When we build our own building we will be able to put back into our program budget $200-$250k every year. In addition, we have professional, qualified assistance from a retired Salvation Army Officer who has agreed to assist us in setting up the systems for our project. He is also very familiar with the homeless and especially homeless families.
