By Eileen Hayes
Each day at Amos House we are confronted with tragedies, but also miracles. In a state where unemployment is at an all time high and daily we meet men, women and children who are homeless, we must make a deliberate, intentional decision to be hopeful that things will get better. After all, if we lose hope, then how can we continue to instill hope in those who rely on us to believe in them when they may not yet have the strength to believe in themselves?
Our model at Amos House is a strength-based model—we believe in the inherent ability of each and every person to accomplish their goals. No matter how low somebody may have fallen, we believe that he or she holds the key to his or her own destiny. We do this by asking our guests what they know about themselves. For example, for a guest who is looking to gain sobriety we ask, “What is the longest period of time you remained sober and how did you do it?” For a guest who wants to work, we ask questions such as, “When in your life were you most successful? How did you achieve success?”
Too often men and women who are poor are treated by those in power as if they are invisible. They have lost their voice, and with the loss of their voice they often lose hope. They are confronted by their mistakes; their record of failures is displayed as a reminder of their inadequacies and the inadequacies of their families for generations before them. Our guests have forgotten that they have strengths and that they have had successes in their lives. At Amos House, we constantly remind the guests that they can achieve; they can overcome the barriers that seem insurmountable. And they do, each and every day.
Our model is comprehensive. It is not enough to give someone a meal and a bed. We must provide training and opportunities to excel. We do this through our culinary and carpentry training programs and our transitional jobs program that creates job opportunities to teach people how to be good employees, particularly for those who have never held a job, in spite of their age. Amos House has created a community of people, who were formerly homeless and struggling with addiction, with a place to be clean and sober, gain pride as workers and human beings. As we have expanded our social enterprise to include More Than a Meal Catering, The Friendship Café, and Amos House Builds (our home improvement business), we have created over twenty-five jobs. In addition, we have hired formerly homeless guests in positions throughout our agency from the soup kitchen to our social services department. Currently there are 32 full- and part-time staff in these positions out of a team of 55 employees.
Put simply, when people can witness lives changed on a daily basis they cannot help but feel a sense of hope that their lives can also improve. At Amos House, hope is contagious. There are so many examples of how this happens. Take Michelle, a 52 year old woman and mother who not only never had a job, she spent the last ten years of her life homeless and in and out of prison and treatment programs. After completing our 90-Day Transitional Program she now holds a job in our Transitional Jobs program and lives in an Amos House apartment. Michelle gives credit to the community of sober people she is surrounded by each day that allows her to maintain her sobriety and more importantly her dignity. Kevin and Jerome are two other examples. Both of these men had been in and out of prison most of their lives and had failed repeatedly at efforts to get clean. When they completed the 90-Day Transitional Program Kevin and Jerome moved into our Phase II housing and joined our dining hall cleaning crew. Each day they talk with the hundreds of men and women who come through our soup kitchen and see it as their personal responsibility to share their stories of recovery. Together, they continue to inspire countless men and women still struggling with addiction to consider joining our program. They attend 12-Step meetings regularly and offer words of hope and encouragement to anyone who will listen.
Amos House offers dignity and respect to all who come to us for services, but we also require a great deal from our program participants. We demand honesty and accountability. We expect people to work hard and value the opportunity they have been given. We do not give a hand out; we ask people to become partners in changing the aspects of their lives that have led them to homelessness and joblessness. Our programs not only provide training for a job skill, they provide skill building in “soft skills’ such as financial literacy and money management, anger management, employment search skills, relapse prevention among others. Our results are significant. Eighty-five percent of the men and women who enroll in our 90-Day Transitional Program successfully complete and move on to permanent housing; 60% of the graduates of our culinary and carpentry training programs graduate and begin jobs in their industry. Only 10% of men and women who were formerly incarcerated return to prison as compared to the recidivism rate of 50-60% in certain neighborhoods in Rhode Island.
We are proud of these statistics and believe that our success is directly tied to two main things: first is our expectation that all of our participants make a commitment to be clean and sober and second our model which provides comprehensive services including housing, training, financial management classes, externships through our transitional jobs program and, finally, employment within our organization as well as throughout Rhode Island. We recognize that this model is designed for people who are motivated to change. We also believe that hope and the belief that change can lead to success are central to all that we do.
Eileen Hayes is President and CEO of Amos House
