Experts say one key to Taking Back Our Neighborhoods is more job opportunities. Especially for ex-cons, who struggle to find any kind of work.
One Memphis program has helped 500 once-troubled souls find a pathway from prison or rehab to meaningful work.
Sidney Harvard now shines a light on the underbelly of trucks instead of the underbelly of life.
"To me any opportunity is a promotion for me from where I came from," Harvard said.
Harvard learned auto mechanics in a Mississippi prison where he spent 13 years.
After his release, Sidney struggled as an independent mechanic and landscaper.
Six month ago, he came to a program run by the Memphis Leadership Foundation's Jim Kennedy:
"We run a business and we actually hire these men. They come to us and they work 40 hours a week and earn a paycheck. Joe, they're not given anything," Jim Kennedy of Economic Opportunities said.
Companies like Barnhart Crane and Rigging then out-source work to the Memphis Leadership Foundation's Economic Opportunities program. It gives men like Sidney Harvard a chance to shift gears in life.
Drug and alcohol screenings help keep the men on the straight and narrow.
With so many convicts being paroled, Harvard says the need for jobs programs like this one is urgent.
"Everybody ain't going to have instant success. But it does work. I believe if more of these was in our community, our community would recover from the crime spree that it is really on," Harvard said.
Starting out at just over six dollars an hour, these men prove themselves and often get promoted.
Instead of committing crimes, some end up buying houses, raising families, and help Taking Back Our Neighborhoods!
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2 comments:
I would like to extend my appreciation to everyone involved with Economic Opportunities and The Leadership Foundation Of Memphis. My husband is now attending this God given program, and I am able to see so much hope and joy within him, which he has not had, most likely, all of his life. So again, thank you for giving him this wonderful opportunity, which is truly a blessing for him and our family!
For the folks wondering who my husband is...Charles Taylor! Keep up the hard work, and always keep God first! You will be successful, if you continue to BELIEVE! Love for always and a day, Stacey Taylor.
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