By Rhonda Shipley
RecycleForce is an example of an employment social enterprises, is a business that provides a paid transitional job and wraparound support services to individuals who are overcoming barriers to work, including returning citizens, citizens enduring homelessness, and opportunity youth. President Gregg Keesling’s last blog introduced RecycleForce’s ABC Model: Any job – Better job – Career. He explained that for hard to employ populations like returning citizens, Any job is a federally subsidized transitional job at RecycleForce and the Better job is an unsubsidized temp or temp-to-perm job secured through our alternative staffing agency Keys2Work. The Career component of the model occurs with permanent employment paying at least living wage in an industry in which the training received at RecycleForce can help propel the worker up the career ladder.
Two unique features of the ABC Model have proven to contribute to RecycleForce’s unparalleled success in moving individuals who are virtually unemployable in the competitive job market into career track employment: the daily Circle of Trust and the peer leadership program.
Every morning all workers and several permanent staff meet for 30-45 minutes for the Circle of Trust. They are seated in chairs arranged in a circle. Modeled after Native American talking circles, workers arrange themselves from youngest to oldest and leave 2 chairs empty – one representing those who have gone before and one representing those yet to come. The Circle is led by one of the production supervisors and is part group therapy and part engaging workers in the program and community. Topics of discussion often includes issues related to responsible parenthood, healthy interpersonal relationships, and economic stability.
The Circle frequently includes visitors who address issues of interest to participants. Popular visitors to the Circle have included the Mayor, Marion County Prosecutor, judges, police officers, Director of the Indianapolis Office of Re-entry, and persons running for local offices. Citizens with felony convictions can vote in Indiana, so prosecutors who address how they would improve the reentry system makes for a lively discussion.
The Circle is also a place where community partners are invited to share information on services they can provide to program participants. Through community partners, program participants have been able to access basic cell phone service, heathcare through a mobile clinic that comes onsite, behavioral health services delivered onsite, banking and budgeting services, credit repair, access to health insurance through the exchange, winter clothing and hygiene supplies, housing and food assistance, and many other services.
In RecycleForce’s peer leadership program, production supervisors work alongside of and serve as peer leaders for participants. All peer leaders receive mentoring training and attend weekly peer leader meetings which includes training on common issues they are facing with program participants. All peer leaders have experienced incarceration and are former program participants themselves. They help participants learn how to deal with everything from family and relationship issues, to childcare and transportation, to problems related to getting along in the workplace. The peer leader’s job is to help the participant “do the next right thing.” Peer leaders know their job is not to force, cajole, or shame others into acting differently, but to invite them to think differently, which often means thinking through possible consequences before acting.
While unconventional, peer leadership creates buy-in from the start as the peer leader and the program participant have the shared personal experience of incarceration. Transitional workers are receptive to a leader’s guidance based on this shared background. At RecycleForce, this has led to greater engagement in work and more candid and real-life problem-solving with issues interfering with reentry. Recently, peer leader training has helped them become more adept in recognizing and thwarting potential violence in both the workplace and in the community.
Most of the peer leaders being groomed by RecycleForce will move on to other jobs in the community where they will provide the leadership needed in other work settings for employers to successfully hire and retain other returning citizens.
Inherent in RecycleForce’s ABC Model is a concept that is foreign to operating a business – moving the best workers on to other employment and keeping those who, for various reasons, are the least productive. In an employment social enterprise, there is always tension between the business and the program. A commitment to moving on the best workers quickly is one way that RecycleForce manages this tension. Most employment social enterprises believe that the business must run the program. At RecycleForce, we believe that the program must run the business. Stay tuned for a subsequent blog on how we manage the tension between business and program.