CAP sees workplace as bridge out of poverty

SANDPOINT — Drop a stone on the smooth face of a pond and the first ring of water foretells what’s to follow.

In perfect symmetry, the ripples spread out and replicate, growing larger as they go.

In like fashion, one Sandpoint organization has leveraged the power of the circle to launch two programs designed to lift families out of poverty. Born from what has been known as the Circles Initiative, the new direction takes a more localized approach with the potential for much wider community impact.

“We learned a lot from Circles and it has been really successful,” said Shirley Paulison, employment specialist for the Community Action Partnership (CAP) office in Sandpoint. “We wanted to up that and do even more to enlist the community on an even bigger scale.”

In its updated version, the program involves two tracks — one called Bridges to Work and a second known as the Future Stories Initiative. The programs are designed to be complementary, with both viewing steady employment as the pathway out of what CAP officials call the “cycle of poverty.”

“Our goal is the help entry level workers stay on the job for at least a year and start building up a stable job history,” said Kelly Heil, employment liaison for CAP.

On the way to that goal, prospective employees enroll in a 10-week, Getting Ahead course, where they work directly with community volunteers to brainstorm and achieve milestones that will carry them forward.

For most of us, these goals might seem rudimentary — earn a GED; get a job and keep it; start saving money for a rainy day.

Getting Ahead graduates sign a contract that they will stick with the program for a year with the support of their community allies and front-line assistance from Paulison and Heil. Their personal goals and the steps they take to realize them become the “story” that then acts as the blueprint for their work in the Future Stories Initiative.

Continuing the ripple effect, the synergy between Future Stories Initiative and Bridges to Work aims to further solidify the individual’s success in the job market. At the same time, Bridges offers resources and benefits to employers who hire graduates of the programs.

“The most important part of Bridges to Work is that it allows a common language to be formed between direct supervisors and their employees,” Heil said, adding that the miscommunication and misunderstanding new employees experience is amplified for entry level workers and those who don’t have job skills.

The information becomes especially important to those who are brand new to the workplace, akin to a crash course in how to be a good employee. According to Paulison, people working their way out of poverty see basic things such as transportation and childcare as huge hurdles to overcome. Any small disruption in that fragile reality can have very big ramifications.

“If someone has a flat tire in the morning, they don’t have AAA or money for a cab, so it makes them late for work,” she said. “They can get so caught up in dealing with the crisis of dealing with a flat tire and arranging for childcare that they might even forget to call their supervisor, which sets up a whole series of other complications.”

That’s where Bridges to Work steps in to support the employer, Heil explained. Through CAP, employers with entry level workers can receive free, on-site employee training, along with cost-free training for supervisors and managers.

Although new to the Sandpoint area, the program has been piloted in Lewiston over the past two years, with a total of five businesses now involved with the program there. According to Heil, Lewiston employers have implemented systems changes that improved both retention and overall productivity.

“One of the main benefits for employers is job retention and a reduction in turnover costs,” she said. “It averages $3,500-$5,000 to replace an employee — that’s a lot of money.”

Once graduates find stable employment, the programs open other doors to keep things on track, financially. Funded through a Paul G. Allen Family Foundation grant, Bridges to Work includes an employee asset-building plan that partially matches money they put into savings.

“So, if they manage to save $5 that week, we’ll match $5 into their savings account,” said Heil.

“It gets people who have never been able to save used to the idea of having a savings account,” Paulison said.

More than anything, the two programs are about self-sufficiency, leadership and community involvement in changing the systemic issues that keep people in poverty, the employment specialist added. Put another way, they are about taking hard-bitten little chunks of a story line and reworking them into happier endings.

“People in poverty don’t have a future story, because they’re so busy living in what we call ‘the tyranny of the moment,’” Paulison said. “We want to help them create a future story for themselves.”

Individuals and employers interested in learning more about the programs can contact CAP by phone at (208) 946-7780, by e-mail at: s.paulison@cap4action.org or visit them online at: www.cap4action.org