A ceremony for Christian Community Action’s PIVOT program was moving in two ways: In the stories of young people who overcame problems like addiction to start toward careers. And in the dance of one of the graduates, Tina Lawson (pictured), who performed her “Praise” dance.
Al May sent in the following write-up:
People always used to tell Lisa Ray she wouldn’t amount to anything in life. Worst than that, she believed them.
A high school dropout and drug addict, Lisa was, by her own admission, a person with “no job, no schooling and no money,” whose life was, up until about three years ago, “one disaster after another” and totally “out of control.”
“And, to top it all off, I was pregnant,” Lisa recalled recently.
Today, Lisa works at a recreational therapist, earning “more money than I have ever earned in my life.” She is also enrolled at Gateway Community College, from which she expects to graduate in May 2008. By any measurement, Lisa has turned her life around for the better
In recognition of all she has achieved , especially in the last two years, , Lisa, along with 17 other participants in Christian Community Action’s (CCA) Program for Internships, Vocational Opportunities and Training (PIVOT), was recognized Friday night at PIVOT’s second annual “Imagine Me” awards ceremony, held at the Dixwell Yale Community Learning Center on Ashmun Street.
The event’s title was taken from a popular gospel song, whose opening lyrics are, ” Loving what I see / When the mirror looks at me / Cause I imagine me / In a place of no insecurities.”
In her remarks at the beginning of the ceremony, Gail Chambless, CCA PIVOT vocational coordinator noted that, like Lisa, nearly all of those being honored Friday were initially told by others that their dreams of change “‘were impossible.”
“Through their determination, dedication and commitment to their personal and family lives, however, these individuals have made dreams come true,” she said.
For some of those being celebrated Friday, the dream was as simple as obtaining their high school equivalency diploma. For others, it was enrolling in or graduating from a local college like Gateway. For still others, like Lisa, it was the satisfaction of securing a job they loved that paid a good wage and offered a bright future.
Part of PIVOT involves placing people in paid six-month internships, from which they gain experience they can use when they apply for full-time employment later on. For Furtera Henry, the internship not only helped her decide what her career path would be — caring for children — but also sparked the desire to have her own business.
“Be on the look out soon for Magic Star Day Care,” she announced Friday.
CCA Executive Director Rev. Bonita Grubbs said the ecumenical social services agency created PIVOT in 2005 to help its 35 Hillside Family Shelter and Stepping Stone families, as well as others of low income, to overcome what she called the barriers they faced in finding employment.
“We envisioned PIVOT as a program that would provide people of low income with the skills, experience and support they needed to secure good jobs that paid living wages and also offered opportunities for growth and advancement,” Rev. Grubbs said. “The magic of the program is not what we did in creating it, however, it is what all the participants did to make it a success.”
Funded by private grants and donations, including support from Empower New Haven, Inc. PIVOT, in the last year, has conducted 96 employment assessments and 34 training sessions. It has placed 31 people in jobs or internships and has seen five of its participants enroll in two- or four-year colleges.
PIVOT has also become a satellite office for the New Haven Department of Education’s Adult Education GED program.
Picking up on the theme of the evening, Rev. Grubbs noted, ” At PIVOT’s inception, we never imagined what the program and its participants could have accomplished in the last two years. We only imagined that if we gave people an opportunity to soar, they would….and they have.”
Besides Lisa Ray and Furtera Henry, others recognized Friday were Lisa Brown, Marlene Evans, Angel Font, Nicole Graham, Keyla Heredia, Niki Lawson, Bobbie Maebry, Olga Mercado, Erma Moye, Phyllis Moore, LaTonya Sims, Rayvon and Sabrina Taylor, Angel and Jazmin Vasquez and Gregory and Lakeya Watkins.
For more information on PIVOT, call Gail Chambless at 777‑6072