Job training seen as central to mission of Focus: Hope in Detroit

An organization founded by a Catholic priest and one of his parishioners in the wake of massive rioting in Detroit in 1967 is still doing good for people in the city more than four decades later. CNS photo/Jim West

An organization founded by a Catholic priest and one of his parishioners in the wake of massive rioting in Detroit in 1967 is still doing good for people in the city more than four decades later.

It’s helped one man escape poverty twice.

Maurice Respress, 33, grew up in the city but lacked the skills necessary to hold down a lasting job. In 1999, he inquired at Focus: Hope about the job training programs it offered.

The organization was established in 1968 by Father William Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis in an old factory across the street from Madonna Parish, where Father Cunningham had been pastor.

Respress got a slot in a Focus: Hope machinist training program. And it worked for Respress. The work was good, but it was not always steady.

“I went in the manufacturing side of the (job training) program. I was working in a plant that they (Focus: Hope) had,” Respress told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview from Detroit. “I had a lot of experience in manufacturing. But when the manufacturing industry started going down, I started working for this place out in Warren,” a border suburb of Detroit.

Without use of a car and only a skeletal bus system linking Detroit with its suburbs, Respress bicycled his way to work — 11.5 miles each way. Then he got a tip about another, better job.

“It was September the tenth, 2005, in the morning,” Respress recalled. “Two days before my (job) interview I was in a car accident and I could not get that job.” A motorist had slammed into his bicycle, dragging the bike — but not Respress — under her car.

Thus began a slump that Respress found hard to shake. He had broken two ribs, and one disc in his lower back was “completely wiped out,” requiring surgery. He was married with one daughter; a second daughter was born during his recuperation, which lasted two years.

But before he was fully healed, Respress’ wife left him and their children behind. “She figured I wasn’t man enough” to support the family, he told CNS.

“I couldn’t get stuff out of my apartment, so I lost it all. The only thing I had left were my van and my two daughters.

“So I had to move in with my sister. We literally ate pancakes” at every meal, Respress added. “We couldn’t get assistance, couldn’t get food stamps” because of ongoing custody issues. “The only thing we were able to get was WIC (federal Women, Infants and Children food assistance). “We were really dogged out while we were over there.”

Over time, Respress thought once more about Focus: Hope and its job training possibilities. Because of his back, he couldn’t go redo vocational training. But as luck would have it, Focus: Hope had an informational technology training program ready to begin soon.

Respress started in June 2008 and graduated from the training program on another date he’s committed to memory: “Feb. 3, 2010. I was in WIC first, so I did community service before I could find a job.”

Care Tech — the company for whom Respress now works — “interviewed late April,” he said. “They called me the next day and wanted me to start right away.”

His first assignment was at a call-center help desk in the Detroit suburbs for five months. Then, Respress was asked to go to Findlay, Ohio, to do troubleshooting for a hospital client. The assignment, expected to last a couple of weeks, stretched into eight months. He stayed weeknights in Ohio while his sister cared for his daughters, then he sped back to Detroit for the weekends.

Impressed with his work in Findlay, Care Tech assigned him to the Detroit Medical Center, one of the city’s major employers — and which recently announced an $800 million expansion of its facilities.

“I’ve had three raises since then,” Respress said. He’s well off enough now to have purchased a house in one of Detroit’s upscale neighborhoods.

And what of his ex-wife? Respress laughed. “She wants her family back, but she can’t have them,” he said. “She said she made a mistake” in underestimating her husband, he added.

Before work, Respress takes his daughters to school at the Joy Preparatory Academy, housed in Madonna Parish’s former grade school. “It’s right across the street from Focus: Hope,” he said. “I drop them off in the morning at 7 and I pick them up at 5.”

Job training has taken on a different character since Respress went through his two training sessions a decade apart, according to Kathy Moran, a Focus: Hope spokeswoman.

“The (latest state of Michigan) grant was very specific as to who was eligible for training and we had to graduate a certain number of people by a certain deadline, so we had to shorten our training options for people,” Moran said. Programs are now targeted to young adults between ages 18- 24. “We had to graduate 560 students by a certain date,” she added.

“So today we’re doing training that gets people into basic entry-level jobs in machining and information technology,” Moran said.

“At one time we had more in-depth training that helped people get into a little more advanced jobs,” she noted. “Our machining program is 12 weeks and it used to be five-and-a-half months, and our IT program is more basic customer service, and it’s 15 weeks — and it used to be up to 13 months depending on what track people wanted to go to.”

“We have enough employers that seek us out for qualified candidates for the positions that they have, and we’re continuously developing new relationships with employers and with employers who are coming into the area,” said Linda Tinsley, manager of Focus: Hope’s Earn and Learn Program, and business manager for student services. Focus: Hope’s track record gives employers confidence, she added.

Students “need confidence that they can achieve in an academic area and they need supportive services. They may not be college-bound students but they have a lot of potential. They need an environment to flourish in, and that’s what Focus: Hope provides,” Tinsley said, citing the on-site presence of a daycare center, a food program and state social services personnel.

Despite the training changes, Moran told CNS, “we feel it’s a very, very big part of our mission. Our mission is to help overcome racism and poverty, and there’s no better way than get an education and get training and get a good job so they can support themselves and their families.”