WorkFaith

WorkFaith is a ministry that has shared office space with us since 2020. Andy Blake, WorkFaith’s Executive Director, and Crystal Parker, the Program Director, occupy two offices on the second floor of the BMBA Partner Center. We would like to share with you the good work of their ministry and how they help those who find themselves in challenging life circumstances.

WorkFaith Birmingham seeks to help address the complicated life issues of adults in transition by empowering them with the skills, support, values, avenues, and life perspectives they need to gain and maintain employment and become productive contributors to their families, churches, and communities.

WorkFaith Birmingham is addressing three primary problems in the city of Birmingham:

1. There are thousands of adults every year leaving transitional ministries, jails, and prisons in the Birmingham area. Many of them lack the support they need to obtain and retain employment. As a result, they often return to negative relationships, a life of crime, self-medication, or a life of dependency on the government and others to survive.

2. Many adults living in our city’s low-income and public housing communities also lack the job search skills, ethics, values, and support they need to become gainfully employed with a sustainable income. Many dropped out of school or full-time employment at some point due to a life situation or challenge and now desire to move into work, but they lack a clear path forward to reach their destination. As a result, they face many hurdles to become employed and often give up their job search, feeling that it is a hopeless ambition.

3. Several organizations in the city provide short-term workforce preparation for developing basic job search skills. They generally focus on resume development, basic interviewing principles, and potential job leads. In addition, there are more extended programs like AIDT’s Ready To Work program that have several days of classes, certification programs, and skill development to increase job search success. These programs work well with self-motivated and educated adults, but many urban adults lack the necessary soft skills and educational skills required to succeed.

WorkFaith offers a solution to these problems by providing a two-week workshop that teaches the 12 Core Competencies in the Creative Job Search approach that has been used successfully with over 3,000 adults in Houston and Birmingham. Every participant learns how to correctly fill out applications and create a resume based on their work history, skills, and abilities. They learn to tell their story in 30 seconds, speak honestly and ethically about their past, develop a support network for their job search, identify potential employers, research potential employers, and much more. In addition, every person participates in mock interviews and observes other mock interviews to be prepared with confidence when they go to job interviews.

At WorkFaith’s workshop, they also seek to equip participants with the ethics and values to retain employment and obtain careers. They incorporate 25 Core Values into their curriculum that includes things like punctuality, workplace safety, honesty, respect, forgiveness, teamwork, problem-solving, and personal responsibility so their graduates will be prepared to face the many challenges associated with work.

Since WorkFaith Birmingham is a Christian ministry, they also teach a Biblical worldview about life, work, ethics, and values, and how work fits into God’s overall good design and purpose for our lives. You do not have to be a Christian to participate in their program. Still, they believe individuals with Christian ethics and values will become employees that any employer would desire to hire. The gospel is clearly presented to each class.

After graduation, WorkFaith staff encourages graduates with job leads, ongoing coaching, and by co-leading the Second Chance Hiring Fair, with other ministries and secular organizations. By God’s Grace, 80 percent of WorkFaith graduates have obtained employment and continue employment after one year. Even though over 50 percent of graduates have criminal convictions in their backgrounds, they have less than a two percent recidivism rate of any of them returning to prison.

For more information about WorkFaith, please contact Andy Blake, Executive Director, at andy.blake@workfaithbhm.org or visit their website at workfaithbhm.org.