There is a fundamental disconnect between the educated, middle-class managers who hire workers for seemingly decent paying jobs and the undereducated, impoverished hires who don’t seem to really want the jobs or know how to keep them, says Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column.
“HOPE Ministries is trying to change this dynamic,” Riegel writes of the organization, whose mission has been to prevent homelessness and promote self-sufficiency, with a special emphasis on the impoverished 70805 ZIP code, since its founding in 2003.
Riegel says HOPE established the first and only client-choice food pantry in Baton Rouge, which is open three mornings a week and creates an atmosphere of dignity for its clients by allowing them to select from available food in a grocery store-like setting. Since 2004, it has served more than 15,000 clients a year.
HOPE also educates communities across the state on the causes of poverty and its influence on how our communities look, feel and act, she says.
“Their training programs are enlightening and seek to help those from relative affluence understand what it feels like to be financially needy and unable to break out of the cycle of poverty,” Riegel writes.
And for the past few years, HOPE has also been focused on what Riegel says is possibly its most significant work yet: developing a multipronged educational program aimed at workforce sustainability—helping the needy get jobs and keep them.
“This is a lot harder than it sounds. The reasons are complex, rooted in the culture of poverty, and have to do with differences in language, culture, education, expectations and learned behavior,” she writes. “Some of the most basic rules of workplace protocol are foreign to first-time employees. Some of the basic realities of living with intergenerational poverty are beyond the grasp of college-educated plant managers. The culture clash plays out in myriad ways, but always with the same results: more turnover, more unemployment, more poverty.”
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