Welcome to Day 2 of my 4th Annual Giving My Money Away festivities! To recap: I feature a charitable organization and guarantee them a minimum $25 donation; and then I add to that based on your comments, 50 cents apiece. Good times!

I have spent a lot of my life working with various populations that are categorized as “at risk.” At risk youth in an education setting, at risk adults struggling with addiction, depression, and crippling poverty; at risk individuals who are struggling to get back on their feet after periods of incarceration. It is easy enough to say that folks out to pull themselves together and get a job. But it is so, so hard to do that when you’re staring 100 different road blocks in the face. It’s hard to get a retail job if you read at a 4th grade level. It’s hard to land a janitorial position if you’ve never been on a job interview. It’s tough to get any on-the-books employment if you don’t have an address to put on your resume because you’re homeless.

The Cara Program is a proven, step-by-step program that prepares adults who have struggled with homeless, poverty, incarceration, and other challenges not just to enter but to succeed in the workforce.  Human services agencies all over Chicago refer people to the program who they believe are ready to take on the serious work of becoming job-ready (including strict selection criteria that includes a phone interview and a drug test.)  The Cara Program is probably best described in its website’s own words:

We don’t shield students from the realities they will face in the workplace; rather, we recreate the workplace here at The Cara Program.  We deploy an experiential training approach that reaches beyond what we teach in the classroom and extends into the very fabric of every student’s experience at The Cara Program.  We give them a manager, a work team, and responsibility.  We make them accountable to themselves, accountable to their team, and accountable to the Cara community at large.

Students receive training in job readiness with classes like professionalism, customer satisfaction, computer skills, and interviewing competency.  What makes the Cara Program so cool, and so effective, is that students simultaneously receive wrap around services from career and life coaches, who help students address their own individual barriers to job readiness (such as housing stability and access to child care).
Students have the opportunity to participate in a program-sponsored internship, and get job placement services with employer partners.  This part is key, too: the program doesn’t just get students *a* job, it strives to get them a good, living-wage job:

Rather than finding ‘just any job’ for our students, The Cara Program commits to working with companies that offer a competitive combination of wages and benefits.  We have formal standards in place for evaluating what qualifies as a ‘quality job’ (where quality is measured by exceeding a certain number of guaranteed hours worked, wage, availability of benefits  and permanency in the position). As a result, our employed students’ current average starting wage is $11.09/ hour at an average of 39 hours/ week.

We partner with companies that find real value in working with The Cara Program to fill their entry-level positions.  Companies typically tell us that Cara students are, on the whole, more motivated and more prepared for their entry-level positions than are non-Cara candidates.

The program’s numbers are startling for their success: 72% of program graduates not only land a job, but still have that job a year later.  Anyone who has worked with adults struggling to become attached to the workforce will tell you: it’s job retention that is the kicker, and it is incredibly difficult to obtain.  The Cara Program’s successes are truly remarkable.  And on top of that, Charity Navigator gives The Cara Program a 4-star rating, reserved for those organizations that exemplify transparency, accountability, and sound financial practices.

I’m super excited to feature this organization, and hope that many of you will help me out with your comments!