From...

February 3, 1999
Web posted at: 5:50 p.m. EST (2250 GMT)

by Alice Laplante

(IDG) -- Tony Williams could tell you a few horror stories about life on the South Side of Chicago. About the violence, the drugs and the endemic lack of economic hope among the neighborhood's inhabitants.

Williams now has a different story to tell. After struggling for years to get by first working in a local fast-food restaurant, then running his own cleaning service Williams is now an Internet systems developer at Manpower Inc. in Milwaukee.

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Williams made that leap thanks to a local program founded specifically to get those at risk of city violence or drug dealers off the streets and into lucrative corporate information technology jobs. "I wasn't going anywhere," Williams says. "I was maintaining, but miserable. This really changed my life."

At age 34, Williams first heard about the HomeBoyz Graphics program, based in Milwaukee, from a neighborhood kid he had befriended. Williams knew nothing about computers or the Web. But he saw the program as a way toward economic independence. He threw himself into learning HTML, the Web programming language, Java and Visual Basic; performed internships at Amoco Corp. and General Electric Co.; and landed his permanent, full-time position 14 months ago. "The future looks very bright," he says.

A different life

A number of public and private programs exist to ease the transition from welfare roll to wage-earner. So far, only a handful HomeBoyz is one of them focus specifically on helping to train the economically disadvantaged for jobs in IT.

Father Jim Holub, the founder of Homeboyz, chose that route for several reasons. First, he says, IT represents such a boom area of economic development. Second, "it's exciting and interesting work, and most importantly it leads to a living wage," he points out. Holub, a Jesuit priest, got permission to start the program "after burying too many gang members in the Chicago projects." He learned HTML so he could teach it to others.

Since 1996, he has graduated 46 students and placed them in corporate jobs. The average salary: $38,000. Not bad for former gang members, most of whom had never worked and many of whom had drug addictions, Holub says.

"It makes tremendous business sense," says Sharon Canter, director of strategic information at Manpower. "There's a tremendous shortage of qualified IT workers. Anything we can do to broaden the applicant pool is very much a win for us as much as for the individuals themselves."

"Generally, what you're finding is that employers take a first step by hiring workers for entry-level positions such as those in food service, telephone call centers or administrative offices," says Bob MacArthur, chief operating officer at the Washington-based Welfare to Work Partnership.

Welfare to Work is a nonprofit group designed to provide support and services to private firms interested in hiring former welfare recipients. And with proper training, "companies are having enormous success with these workers," MacArthur says.

But "this is just a first step," says Kim Rhim, executive director of The Training Source Inc., a Seat Pleasant, Md.-based nonprofit organization that teaches basic computer skills to former welfare recipients.

Rhim says she's talking very basic computer skills. Although many of her students dream about IT careers, there's no quick path to them, Rhim stresses.

"We tell them, 'Learning is a lifelong process. We'll help you get a job to keep you stable. Then at night or on the weekends you can pursue your future goals,'" she says.

Part of the reason that so few former welfare workers have so far made a successful transition to IT jobs even entry-level ones is the "work first" directive of the federal Welfare Reform Act. "We're supposed to get these people to work by whatever means is necessary. If they can only flip burgers, that's what they have to do. If they can only baby-sit, that's it," says Opal Evans, founder and executive director of the Women and Youth for Self-Reliance program in Phoenix. Her program provides basic computer training for people mostly women who want to get off public assistance.

Companies interested in cooperating even with the more sophisticated programs such as Rhim's or Evans' need to understand they won't be getting fully trained workers, but truly entry-level employees. Companies seeking a cheap source of labor or who need an IT worker to fill an immediate vacancy need to be realistic. "This is not a quick fix," Rhim says.

And don't underestimate the amount of additional training that will be necessary, warns Gershia Coggs, director of the Computer-Related Training Center in Milwaukee, which has a similar program.

That's why most firms with welfare-to-work programs follow Sprint Corp.'s route.

Sprint provides enough training to bring individuals into entry-level jobs within its Kansas City, Mo.-based call center. It provides them with additional training, counseling and educational opportunities so they can advance into higher-level jobs, says Jerry Glassier, director of human resources planning and strategy/staffing at Sprint.

Because Sprint's welfare-to-work program participants are just now finishing up their first full year of employment, "I anticipate we'll see people beginning to take advantage of these funds and see them moving on to other jobs within Sprint," Glassier says.

Key to the success of the program is that Sprint, in addition to providing the skills training needed to do the work, has put its human resources personnel, call-center supervisors and managers through training so they understand the special needs of those workers. In addition, the workers are provided with peer mentors whom they can approach with questions they might not want to ask of a supervisor.

Indeed, the most successful welfare-to-work programs put such solid support structures in place, MacArthur says.

"You have to understand: Many of these people have never held a job before," Glassier says. Steven Wing, director of government hiring programs at CVS Corp., based in Woonsocket, R.I., says benefits abound for private firms that hire former welfare recipients. CVS has hired 1,578 such individuals in the past two years and still employs 1,014 of them. That's a 64% retention rate. "In our line of business, those are great statistics," he says.

As at other firms, workers are hired into entry-level positions in CVS' retail pharmacies. But many have moved up into administrative positions; inevitably, they will find their way into IT and other advanced functions. Wing remembers one of the first employees hired, who graduated to working in customer service in the corporate office. She had two kids who had refused to go food shopping with her when she was on welfare because they were too embarrassed to be seen paying with food stamps.

"The first week this woman got a paycheck, the kids were waiting in the car when she got home they wanted to go to the store with her when she paid actual cash," Wing says. "When you hear stories like this, you know it's much bigger than just hiring or retaining an employee."

LaPlante is a freelance writer in Woodside, Calif.