This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 8, 2008 - Janese Jordan had tears in her eyes as she spoke Tuesday about being a part of the first class of St. Patrick Center's clients trained through its new Project Begin. Jordan, a veteran who was injured in Iraq, ended her military career to care for her dying mother. She graduated from the Sherwin Williams training program and hopes to become a painter in a union shop.
"'That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger,'" Jordan said. "I have not always felt so strong but now, as a result of some of this program, (I'm feeling) very strong. The Begin Program at the St. Patrick's Center has given me a new start."
Project Begin teams the St. Patrick Center with the city, private businesses and the Department of Commerce to address a leading cause of homelessness: unemployment. It will provide job training, employee recruiting and a "business incubator" to its clients and partner companies in a central location.
At St. Patrick's Center, "we have worked at cures for those causes and not just at managing the symptoms," Dan Buck, the center's CEO, said.
The project, four years in the making, cost $5 million. The funds went to renovate space to create the center -- secure office space and areas for networking, meetings and training. The St. Patrick Center estimates that about 1,800 people will graduate from Project Begin in the next 10 years and that 20 to 25 new businesses will be spawned by the "incubator," creating about 400 jobs.
Buck said that the project grew out of the center's experience with its successful social enterprise, McMurphy's Grill, which trains people to work in restaurants and other food service jobs.
Despite this experience, getting Project Begin going was not easy. "There were days we wanted to walk away from this project," Buck said. "It was large. It was cumbersome."
The difference between Project Begin and other social enterprises is that the goals are job training and placement; the enterprise is not expected to make a profit.
Employers who may be conducting training sessions will be able to train on-site. Sherwin Williams has already trained people how to paint. The project is seeking more partners, Buck said, and is talking to companies like Wayland Securities and World Wide Technology. It also hopes to tap into businessess that already find employees through McMurphy's Grill.
"They'll have the pick of the litter," Buck said of the potential employee pool for those working with Project Begin. The project is seeking more partners, Buck said.
The "business incubator" is a support network of services and mentoring to help small businesses get up and running. Those businesses would then help others in the incubator, Buck said, and, as they grew, would employ St. Patrick's clients.
"They come in as a shell, as an egg," Buck explained. "It's our job to cultivate it and get it to go ... and then it can go clucking off downtown."
Amelia Flood is a freelance writer in St. Louis.