Jobs program seeks to change attitudes
STRIVE focuses on social skills as keys to employment

BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer

GLORIA STRAVELLI Jack Wynn is seeking office space and recruiting a board of directors for STRIVE, a job-training program that focuses on attitude and social skills to help people become employed.

A firm handshake, making eye contact, and accepting criticism are workplace skills that may be the keys to breaking the cycle of joblessness and poverty, according to an advocate for a job-training program for disadvantaged people.

“The core of the program is attitude change, learning social skills,” explained Jack Wynn. “I’m talking about dressing appropriately, learning how to shake someone’s hand, to look people in the eye when you’re talking to them, to speak distinctly, interview skills.”

In addition to workplace skills, the STRIVE program — an acronym for Support and Training Result in Valuable Employment — identifies job opportunities and places graduates in jobs and, importantly, mentors them and their employers for a minimum of two years.

According to Wynn, Red Bank, STRIVE training is free and open to anyone. The only criteria is a desire to attend.

Wynn is executive director of STRIVE North Jersey Coast and its umbrella organization, Gateway East Empowerment Network Inc., Red Bank.

Strive North Jersey Coast is an affiliate of the national STRIVE program, which has 33 affiliates in 21 cities. The program has 27,000 graduates to date who remain in the work force.

A veteran of faith-based mentoring programs, Wynn is looking to open a Red Bank office for STRIVE, an interactive, self-help program that is classroom-based.

Participants spend eight hours a day, 40 hours per week, in the four-week program turning their attitudes around about employment and, invariably, life in general.

Wynn hopes to have Strive North Jersey Coast up and running by mid-October and is aiming for 127 graduates the first year.

“If we place 13 people in a job every cycle, there are 10 cycles per year, after a couple of months employers will start to notice,” he predicted.

During the program’s first year, Wynn said, some 1,200 people will be interviewed, three times the number needed for intake, to come up with enough candidates.

“It’s almost 10 to one,” he said. “That’s how difficult it is.”

Initially, the success rate isn’t high, Wynn acknowledged.

“Seventy-five percent of these employees will be fired during the first two years,” he said.

But the key to the program’s success is that continued support is provided.

“Anytime an employer or employee has a problem they can come back to STRIVE,” he said. “There are no limits in terms of support.

“We’re giving them a place to go when they fail. We sit down with them and the employer and resolve the situation. The best part is the employer has a place to go.”

According to Wynn, eventually, there’s a turning point.

“They begin to get the message that they have to show up on time, be polite, respond effectively. It’s just the discipline of being employed.”

Referrals will come from social service agencies, Red Bank Regional High School’s youth services program, faith-based initiatives, the state parole board and community organizations.

The STRIVE demographic is typically individuals ages 18-45, 50 percent are women, 40 percent parolees. Some, but not all, are on welfare. The common denominator, he said, is the person is living in poverty -- some are homeless.

Participants begin classes at 9 a.m. on Friday and after four hours in the classroom, each has to get up and explain why they should be invited back on Monday.

“Those that come back on Monday start with the basics,” he said. “Men show up in suits, ties, dress slacks, shined shoes, no sneakers. Women have to wear conservative dress, blouses, skirts, dresses, conservative shoes.”

Classroom work will help participants develop job readiness skills like stress management, time management, following/taking direction, conflict resolution, decision making, and how to deal with rejection and frustration.

They will also learn about employment trends, networking, job search and interview skills, résumé preparation, employment testing, and referral and backgrounds checks.

After two years of employment, graduates are brought back for another level of training that helps guide them onto career paths.

“Now we’re looking at where they are going,” Wynn explained. “We help them define a career path and focus on that.”

He is seeking office space in Red Bank so people who can get to the NJ Transit North Jersey Coast Line can access the program.

“I hope to have headquarters in Red Bank,” he said, “but the program is portable and we will set up four-week training programs in Asbury Park, Long Branch, Freehold and Keansburg.”

“If they can get to the train we can get them to work, from Bayhead to Penn Station,” he said. “I’m also looking for employers along the line to underwrite the STRIVE training.”

That’s $3,300 per person paid for by employers, he said. “I’m hoping if they want employable people they will provide some of the funding for training.”

What’s in it for employers? Wynn said the program would minimize the cost of turnover for employers. He has already made presentations to Wegmans, Wal-Mart, Macy’s and others.

Wynn’s experience in skills training for disadvantaged people comes through his work as a mentor in training programs for local churches and Red Bank-based nonprofit Love In the Name of Christ (Love Inc).

But Wynn said he became disillusioned with the programs’ major shortcoming – they moved people off welfare, not out of poverty.

“I was looking for a program to move people out of the cycle of poverty to financial self-sufficiency,” he said. “That was the genesis of the idea for me.”

His motivation comes from his own life experience.

Wynn had a successful career as a management consultant and real estate investor until the early 1990s when market changes and skyrocketing interest rates led to business failure.

The former Monmouth Beach resident became bankrupt and homeless in 1991-93. Formerly wealthy, Wynn’s experienced poverty firsthand.

“I couldn’t get employment. I had no visible support. There was no place where I could get help with my background — I had a college degree and 25 years as a management consultant,” he said. “There was no place for me to turn to. I realized the sheer hopelessness of it. It was just absolutely frustrating.”

With the help of a friend, Wynn earned a master’s degree in pastoral ministry in 1996.

“What began to come back to me when my friend helped me, bailed me out and I went back to school, was that I was going to help people, but I didn’t know how,” he said.

In 2002, Wynn found the program he was looking for at First Baptist Church in Lincoln Gardens, Somerset. The church had taken over the faltering New Brunswick affiliate of STRIVE, which has national headquarters in Harlem in New York City.

As executive director, Wynn is focusing on fund raising and assembling a proactive board of directors.

Current board members include Carolyn Eyerman, founder of Love Inc., and Maria Elisa Martins, assistant vice president and manager of the BCP Bank on Broadway in Long Branch.

“The key to the success of replicating the STRIVE program locally is how successful I am in building a board of directors,” he explained. “We need people who will support my efforts financially, spiritually, emotionally.”

To fund the program, Wynn and his board need to raise $5,000 per month to cover costs of staff, rent, utilities, insurance and a $100,000 STRIVE replication fee for training and support.

On Sept. 18, Gateway East Empowerment Network is hosting a retreat open to anyone interested in learning about plans to launch the STRIVE program in Monmouth County. The event will be held at Stella Maris Retreat Center in Elberon. For more information, contact Wynn at gatewayeastenie@yahoo.com or call(732) 936-9136.

Wynn sees 2002, when he first came across the STRIVE program, as a turning point.

“I saw that the content they were doing was training people and getting them into jobs and then mentoring them,” he said.

“I saw life coming into people who had never had life. I saw love, I saw compassion, I saw success. I saw lives changing slowly, but changing. I saw God at work through people.”