If you had met Jerry two years ago, his life may have seemed at a standstill, or even a dead-end. After getting into a car accident, he was out of a job and in need of housing. For Jerry to return to his feet and find steady employment, without a high school diploma, would have struck most as an unlikely prospect.

From Crisis to Stability

It’s hard to imagine, talking with Jerry today, that he ever would have seen it that way. In conversation, he is bright, energetic and witty. When asked about the trying place in which he found himself two years ago, he reflects with seriousness and sincerity. Yet he is more eager to talk of his current job, a community-service position with AmeriCorps, which he recently landed after completing Hope for the Inner City’s Jobs for Life program.

Jerry discovered Jobs for Life after being introduced to Paul Green, Hope’s executive director, by a mutual friend at New City Fellowship in Chattanooga. At Green’s invitation, Jerry visited Hope and met Frank Hill, Jobs for Life instructor.

Throughout Jobs for Life’s eight-week term, Hill would act as an instructor and guide to Jerry. He would help Jerry find a job, but he would also encourage him to find a renewed strength of character, an asset that if developed diligently, would be the key to keeping a job. With Hill’s help, Jerry would see afresh how employment is meant to be more than just a fast-track to a paycheck.

‘Job Skills’ Not Enough

At the center of Jobs for Life’s mission is Hill’s belief that skills training, a primary component of standard job training programs, cannot by itself provide a lasting solution to this community’s current crisis of joblessness. While he acknowledges that unemployment is a social problem, often resulting from a lack of education, Hill insists that its causes run deeper. In fact, they result from what he calls “root issues of the heart.”

The goal of Jobs for Life, as with all of Hope’s developmental programs, is to face these root issues first. “[We] connect to and care for these root issues,” says Hill, “through a strategy that combines work readiness training, biblical principles, and volunteer mentoring.” Ordering Jobs for Life’s strategy in this way, says Hill, provides students with the “the practical building blocks of healthy character.”

The Jobs for Life strategy has yielded great dividends for Jerry. “I now have a broad awareness of how to communicate to employers and present myself in a respectable manner,” he says.

Yet Jobs for Life’s impact on Jerry seems to have reached deeper than his attitude towards employers. His recent job choice reflects a renewed concern not only for his personal livelihood, but for the health of his community as well.

Now Helping Others

As an AmeriCorps employee, Jerry works through Hope for the Inner City to be what he calls “an ear and a voice to the community ... someone they can talk to and help them resolve problems by their own actions.”

Jerry is carrying the strategy he learned through Jobs for Life back into his own community. With the help of the local Neighborhood Association and area churches, he is challenging the residents of East Chattanooga to face the root issues beneath their problems. “I want to empower local residents to make decisions on changing their community themselves,” he says.