We Train

Problem: If a reentrant, coming out of long term incarceration, isn’t prepared to assimilate into a workplace culture, the results could be disastrous. 

Solution: Career Path Workshop, developed by 2nd Chance Indiana's Director of Training, Doug Evans.

After retiring from a 40-year career with Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC), Doug Evans (photo below) immediately sought other ways to serve those he believed deserved a second chance. He decided that a new curriculum needed to be developed, designed specifically for the justice involved that incorporated what he thought, based on his experience with IDOC, were the most effective approaches for obtaining and retaining meaningful employment. 

The only difference was that this time, no longer a government employee, he would incorporate his Christian faith into the course by opening and closing sessions in prayer and using stories from the Bible to support his teaching.

In 2nd Chance Indiana's Career Path Workshop students learn that:

• You were made to work.
• You were created with God-given skills and talents to apply to your work.
• There is dignity in work.
• We worship God through our work.
• We serve our family and meet our needs through work.
• We love our neighbors through work.

Although the course is built on a Christian foundation, people of any faith or no faith are welcome to participate. We don’t preach to students or attempt to convert them, but we do encourage them to understand their value as a human being, and how to make honest work a central feature in the creation of a new and better future.

We attempt to pair each student with a personal mentor, who walks alongside the student during the 5-module course, helping him/her to identify and overcome obstacles. Mentors make an effort to remain in close contact for six months to a year after graduation, and hopefully the duo will form a lifelong bond.

Many of 2nd Chance Indiana's Employer Partners grant interview preferance to reentrants who graduate from our Career Path Workshop course. Here’s why:

• This course teaches a clear understanding of employer expectations.
• Students develop a ready-for-work attitude and an understanding of how they can be an integral part of a team effort.
• It provides confidence building. 
• A career assessment points students in a specific direction for their future.
• An ABC vocational plan is a roadmap from A-any job, to a B-better job, to a C-career.
• Resume´preparation and mock interviews prepare students to meet with potential employers.

Considering that, according to Zippia research Summary, 89 percent of those who are rearrested are unemployed, graduating from Career Path Workshop and going to work provides a real chance at a better life. 

We do our best to educate area employers about Career Path Workshop—the course content, the emphasis on character development, and the high level of participant commitment required to complete the course—in hopes that more employers will grant priority consideration to our Career Path Workshop graduates.

We offer the course to inmates preparing for release from long-term incarceration in Marion County Adult Detention Center (a 3,000 bed facility, Indiana's largest county jail), in other county jails, and those being supervised by community corrections in work release facilities.