By SHEILA BEACHUM BILBY
When his mother died soon after he graduated from high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Timothy Farris admits to feeling lost and even stumbling into a bit of trouble with friends.
At the invitation of concerned relatives, he moved to Detroit. There, he found his footing, completed an associate degree in business and was working as a rental store sales manager.
He was making money, but still felt adrift in a job that didn’t provide much opportunity for growth or advancement.
Enter
Focus: HOPE to help change another life.
Focus: HOPE has helped change the life of Timothy Farris and many other Detroit area residents. Photo by Sheila Beachum Bilby
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“I went through a character transition, I believe, at Focus: HOPE,” said Farris, now 25.
Focus: HOPE was founded in Detroit in 1968 to help battle such social ills as racism, poverty and injustice. The longtime Mott Foundation grantee has received over
$14.7 million in support since 1981.
For years, Focus: HOPE offered an array of job-training programs to help area low-income workers prepare for entry into the labor market -- historically in Michigan’s automotive industry.
But the faltering economy and the dramatic decline in the country’s manufacturing sector have left many industrial communities, including Detroit, facing mounting job losses. Focus: HOPE and other organizations with manufacturing-related workforce training found that their programs were no longer preparing participants for the actual jobs available.
So Focus: HOPE took up the challenge and began partnering with local universities to better align its programs with the changing labor market. The nonprofit retooled two of its core workforce programs, the
Center for Advanced Technologies (CAT) and the
Machinist Training Institute (MTI), to offer career options beyond the auto sector.
CAT students now can earn four-year engineering degrees under partnerships with Lawrence Technological University, Wayne State University, the University of Detroit Mercy and the University of Michigan.
MTI offers state-licensed courses in precision machining and metalworking, preparing students for careers in advanced manufacturing and computer-aided design.
And Focus: HOPE hasn’t stopped there. Its
Information Technologies Center, which has launched more than 1,200 students into information technology careers in the past decade, still offers basic technical training in computer skills. Over the next two years, thanks to a program launched in 2005 under a partnership with Wayne State, an initial cadre of 17 ITC participants will earn four-year degrees in computer sciences.
Monica Brockmeyer, an associate professor of computer science at Wayne State, helps oversee that effort. The Information Management and Systems Engineering program is designed to bring more minorities and women into the information technology field and give them the academic support they need to complete a college degree.
“They are faring pretty darn well,” said Brockmeyer, crediting the program with more than tripling the number of African-American computer science majors at the university since 2004.
Focus: HOPE has further diversified its job training capacity with initiatives targeting two growing sectors: health care and, through a property weatherization program, “green” jobs.
The collaborations with area educational institutions reflect a basic tenet of the Focus: HOPE approach.
“Education is the key,” said Eleanor Josaitis, co-founder and a board member of Focus: HOPE. “I don’t think you’ll ever eliminate racism and poverty until people have education, until they have jobs, until they have opportunity in their lives.”
Not satisfied with just working to advance job and education prospects for adults, Focus: HOPE has launched another venture that will touch many neighborhood families and their school-age children.
 Focus: HOPE’s job training programs have evolved to meet the needs of a changing labor market. Photo courtesy of Focus: HOPE |
Under the
HOPE Village Initiative launched in 2009, the organization has partnered with neighborhood schools, businesses and other nonprofit groups to promote quality education and offer support services to almost 8,000 residents living in the neighborhoods surrounding its 40-acre campus. About 40 percent of neighborhood families, most of them headed by women, live in poverty.
As part of the initiative, a Family Learning Center will open this summer on campus. Area residents will have access to computer training, financial and adult literacy as well as job-search and health-care assistance. School-age children will be able to get tutors and mentors to help with homework and life skills.
“The whole idea of creating this interconnected network of services and approaches isn’t new, but having the will and the gumption to go ahead and do it is, I think, where we excel,” said William F. Jones, Jr. the CEO of Focus: HOPE.
Sid E. Taylor, chairman and founder of SET Enterprises Inc., a Warren-based metal-processing service, was so impressed with Focus: HOPE that in the late ’90s he hired 20 workers trained through MTI. He recently hired three additional graduates and expects to bring seven more on board in the coming months.
“Focus: HOPE already has them pretty much acclimated for the business environment,” Taylor said, “and that was very important to me.”
As for Farris, within two years of enrolling at Focus: HOPE, he completed a curriculum of basic office and network administration classes, and received an advanced network computing system certificate. After earning top marks in his classes, he was a teaching assistant in the ITC program before eventually joining IC Data Communications, a Detroit-based information technology firm.
Farris’ drive and focus are what impressed Terence Willis, the firm’s co-owner.
“Tim is an example of an ideal employee, properly prepared,” Willis said.
Farris credits that preparation to Focus: HOPE, which helped him develop “not just computer skills, but life skills” in building a foundation for success in a career that fulfills him. He plans to strengthen that foundation with more advanced training at Henry Ford Community College later this year.