RestoreOKC, Inc

PROJECT PURPOSE

Restore Jobs is a job-training arm of RestoreOKC. There are 3 job-training businesses under the Restore Jobs arm of RestoreOKC: Wellspring Cleaning Company, The Market at Eastpoint, & the Eastside Eatery. We seek to create employment opportunities within our community that can employ neighbors who remain otherwise un (or under) employed due to a barrier to employment and help them achieve economic mobility through employment. Research nationally shows that unemployed workers tend to have lower education and skill levels, and live in certain concentrated geographic areas. Restore Jobs hopes to be an answer for that in Northeast Oklahoma City which is a historic tract of highly concentrated poverty. Wellspring is a commercial & residential cleaning company started by a single-mother from our community who had significant experience in commercial and residential cleaning but who lost her job during a health crisis. Her dream was to begin a business within RestoreOKC that could employ single-mothers at a living-wage salary and connect them to resources, training & community. Wellspring employed 40 women throughout the pandemic who became CDC-certified in COVID remediation. Our average staff person starts with us having worked an average of 3 part-time jobs across the city, is transit dependent, is attempting to regain custody & makes under $19,000 per year. As we have grown, we have established partnerships with ReMerge, Hope House, Catholic Charities & Homeless Alliance which allow us to act as an employer partner for neighbors regardless of whether or not they may be currently homeless, seeking custody, or have a recent incarceration history.

EVIDENCE

Prison Policy Research details interventions that are critical for women who have been incarcerated. Given our state's high rates of female incarceration we wanted to determine not only best practices, but work with another employer model in Denver that successfully worked with a scaled approach to create employment that could last for 12-18 months while stability was regained & then launch stabilized families into housing & long-term career paths to break the whole cycle for the whole family for their whole lives.

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

Almost 1 million mothers have left the workforce ? with Black mothers, Hispanic mothers and single mothers among the hardest hit. Almost one in four children experienced food insecurity in 2020, which is intimately related to the loss of maternal income. And more than three quarters of parents with children ages 8 to 12 say the uncertainty around the current school year is causing them "significant stress." Uniquely, our community of women was facing the ability to not work & collect COVID unemployment wages. Yet, they knew that extra money & idle time would jeopardize their long-term goals for recovery & regaining custody of their children. So, they elected to remain at work during the pandemic becoming frontline workers who provided COVID-remediation for grocery stores, clinics & other essential services across the state.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

PROGRAM: A full-time, year to 18-month long workforce training program for economically-disadvantaged women that focuses on flexible scheduling for court mandated appointments and higher-education courses in partnership with CFSI at Oklahoma State University. EVALUATION METHODS: Surveys are conducted at start, 90-days, after graduation & exit of all current participants & graduates in addition to tracking pay, benefits, housing data, support services, & graduation rates. Graduates are asked to complete a survey at 3 & 6-months post-graduation & 16 of them have graduated into higher-education or long-term career paths.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

None

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Able to continue operation without additional funding from the State of Oklahoma