World of Good Blogburst, Project Match Style

Welcome to another World of Good (WOG) post here at The Scratching Post. The purpose and past of our WOGs can be found here.

The biblical injunction to all of us is to care for the poor. To some that means handouts to the transient standing on street corner with a sign. To others, it's providing free medical services to the poor. To the people of Project Match, it's applying sophisticated techniques to permanently change the lives of the needy.

I found Project Match following a Wall Street Journal article and as I read more about them I was amazed at how hard these people and their colleagues in other programs were working to continually improve their understanding of the best techniques to help the poor raise themselves out of poverty.

From Project Match’s website:

Founded in 1985 in Chicago, Project Match conducts program development and research in the fields of welfare-to-work and workforce development… Project Match provided some of the earliest evidence of the widespread phenomenon of job cycling among current and former welfare recipients. While the intervals between jobs were short for some people, they were much more extended for others, resulting in a pattern of intermittent work.

It’s impossible to improve your lot in life when you’re working irregularly. If you think of your own career, imagine where you’d be if each of your jobs had lasted only 3-6 months. No raises, no promotions, no opportunities.

Project Match picks up where standard social programs leave off.

“Entering the workforce is really the starting point, whereas programs are being designed today as if the job is the end point. For people to make a permanent attachment to the workforce and earn a living wage, they’re going to need assistance—help to return to school or advance to a better job—after they enter the workforce. At this point programs are not designed to provide that.”

In short, getting jobs was not the problem. Keeping jobs was. Without consistent employment, advancement, training and raises don’t come. My summary of Project Match is that they are taking the place of constructive parenting in a dysfunctional culture. I would bet that most of the people reading this blog came from families where your parents taught you the connection between work and pay and the connection between effort and success. Without those conceptual foundations, the world seems to capriciously reward some and punish others.

By combining psychology with social work, Project Match showed how you could teach people to stick with jobs and change their way of life. Project Match rewards it’s participants the way you would reward your children, giving them positive reinforcement as they learn new skills.

(It) is built on the concept that an "incremental ladder" exists that, with the discipline provided by regular diary entries, allows participants to climb to economic independence. For those on the lowest rungs of the ladder…some parents mark successes by taking their children to school on time or to extracurricular activities. Others volunteer at school, become members of their tenant management board, or join a school safety patrol. These gradual activities help parents learn to organize their lives, a lesson that can be expanded later into work preparation training.

How well does it work? Here's one success story.

Project Match helped convince Crawford-Bailey to obtain her high school equivalency degree, then a part-time job, and enroll in college. When Crawford-Bailey was ready to give up, Project Match counselors persuaded her otherwise…Eight years later, she was finishing up her college degree while working full time at a local hospital as a case manager who explained to teenage moms why they should remain in school.

And another.

Dare's journey has been neither quick nor easy. It's been three years from beginning her GED classes to getting her associate's degree. It took her eight months to get her GED, a signal accomplishment that gave her the first sweet taste of success. "I thought: Yes, I did it." With that step behind her, she took another — a big one. She enrolled in college, where she found new obstacles. … Her family was supportive, but not her boyfriend, who didn't think she needed to go to college, nor that she was capable of it. She had her own doubts. "That first semester was hard," she says, recalling a class load that included psychology, speech, English and dental science. "College was a lot different than getting my GED. There was so much studying. I remember crying a lot."

…"It helps a lot," says Dare, "when you've got someone who cares." Gradually, the tears evaporated, as did the fears of failure. Now she bubbles with confidence and with goals: "I want to work for awhile first, but I'm thinking of going to SIU to become a dental hygienist. Before, I was so down on myself I didn't know I could do it. Now, I know I can."

Throughout the articles I read, the phrase “complicated lives” arose again and again. The people trying to escape poverty are indeed leading complicated lives. Here are some statistics.

• 54 percent of new participants during one 12-month period were living in domestic violence situations.
• 13 percent had been victims of rape or incest.
• 14 percent had severe mental health problems, including depression and schizophrenia.
• 14 percent were abusing alcohol and using drugs, mostly marijuana and cocaine.
• 28 percent came from households with at least one child who had a severe physical or mental disability.

Imagine trying to work your way out of poverty in situations like those.

"I'm the first college student in my family," she says, "and it's a big family." …Now I have a sister who's going to go to college and another who's going to graduate from high school. With me doing something, it's changed the whole attitude of my family. I have plans for my son," a junior in high school. "He ain't stopping at high school.

"I have made a difference," Crawford-Bailey says. "There comes a time when you have to mature out of public aid. But if it weren't for Project Match, I'd have given up a long time ago."

The people working in Project Match aren’t just trying to improve the lot of the poor, they’re building a structure of knowledge and techniques to help future generations deal with these issues. Through research and trial and error, they are developing an understanding of the mechanisms of poverty. From reading their research you can tell that they deeply care about the people they work with.

Other websites used as sources include Welfare to Work is Possible by Donald Sevener and Welfare to Work: Real World Experiences from the Joyce Foundation newsletter.

Previous WOGs and an invitation to join the WOG Squad can be found here. We deeply appreciate those who link to these posts and welcome other bloggers who would like to do so.