Remember, amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic”
-Sir Richard Needham
Sir Richard was a Brit, known for his wit, and even though no one really knows now to what he was referring, his quip is a powerful reminder of the great value of a motivated amateur.
After years of working with those in our poorest neighborhoods, we are convinced that while racism still exists, the overwhelming divider of people is really poverty. Whatever color our skin, grinding poverty limits our choices, affects our health and education, causes discord in the home, and can promote crime. Poverty affects the whole family, and generational poverty condemns its children.
The tremendous poverty in many of Indy’s neighborhoods is caused in large part by the very high percentage of formerly-incarcerated people who live there. For those individuals, the chances of getting a job has been slim to nil. In these high-unemployment neighborhoods, the entire area pays the price with dilapidated homes, lack of support businesses like grocery and drug stores, and too often high crime.
With 12,000 inmates being released into Marion County each year, it was imperative to improve their chances for a job. So UNITE INDY developed the first website just for people who have served time in prison or jail. Our next challenge has been that many of these folks have no experience with employment, perhaps never even had a parent who had a long-term job. Training was needed about how to get and keep a job, or all our efforts to secure employment would be worthless.
Enter the amateurs. Some are retired, others volunteer around their work schedules, but all are men and women who have joined UNITE INDY to improve the outlook for returnees from incarceration and their families. They become letter writers, mentors, or class facilitators of a Biblically-based job preparation course that we now offer called Jobs for Life.
Obviously, we’ll need more help, but we’ve learned, when God orders something, He provides. He led us to create the website, to implement the training program, and it will be accomplished. There is a great tide coming that will raise all boats in our inner city thanks to those gifted and caring amateurs who are working shoulder to shoulder with us to change the trajectory of generational poverty by reducing poverty one job at a time. Our thanks to them all.
Blessings,
Jim
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