August 26, 2002
CAROLYN Woods (above center) of Tarrant Baptist Association visits with Teretha Pass (left), a participant in the Cornerstone Christian Women's Job Corps program, and her mentor, Ollie Anderson.
CHRISTIAN WOMEN'S JOB CORPS:
Worship, work & witness
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___FORT WORTH--Teretha Pass serves breakfasts and burgers at a Fort Worth cafe. Each month, a stack of bills arrives in the mailbox at her modest apartment. And she gives thanks for every one of them.
___"The bills let me know I can get what I want," she explained. Bills mean she is back in the mainstream of society, with a permanent address and a job.
___Not long ago, Pass lived in homeless shelters, struggling with alcoholism and a history of abuse. June 7 marked her first-year sobriety anniversary.
___She thanks God each day for her food service job, but she doesn't intend to wait tables for the rest of her life.
___"I'm trying to get my GED, and then I want to get into a sign language interpretation program," she said. "I want to teach sign interpretation and work with kids with special needs."
___About three months ago, Pass enrolled in the Christian Women's Job Corps program at Fort Worth's Cornerstone Assistance Network. Christian Women's Job Corps offers a biblically based approach to teaching job skills and life skills to unemployed or underemployed women.
MARGARET YOUNG, site coordinator for the Cornerstone Christian Women's Job Corps in Fort Worth, affirms Pass for the progress she has made in the job skills and life skills training program. She presents a certificate, declaring it the first day of the "best" of her life.
___In classroom-style instruction, participants study the Bible and learn about personal money management, computer skills, parenting, communication, health and nutrition.
___Each participant in the program is paired with a mentor--a mature Christian woman who agrees to keep in close contact with her for at least one year.
___Ollie Anderson, president of women's ministries at Meadowbrook First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, recently became a mentor to Pass. She wants to see Pass grow not only in social and vocational skills, but also in her relationship with God.
___"I want to be an extension of God's love and goodness to her," she said. "I'll just move slowly and wait upon the Lord as he presents the opportunities."
___Mentors provide moral support and spiritual encouragement to those with whom they work, according to Margaret Young, site coordinator for the Cornerstone Christian Women's Job Corps. The goal is to help women learn to make responsible decisions for themselves, not to continue to be dependent upon others.
___"A mentor is not a martyr, not a doormat with a smiley face on it saying, 'Step on me,'" Young tells the mentors when they are trained.
___Christian Women's Job Corps is designed to help low-income women "become initiators" and learn to be self-motivated, said Young, a member of North Richland Hills Baptist Church in Fort Worth.
___"Many of these women never have learned that they can initiate things in their lives," she said. "The more they learn to do for themselves, the more they grow in their ability to make right choices.
___"We want to create an environment where these women >motivate themselves to make right choices and emerge as the best they can be."
MARGARET YOUNG, site coordinator for the Cornerstone Christian Women's Job Corps in Fort Worth, leads a session for trainers, mentors and participants.
___Christian Women's Job Corps has been creating that kind of environment for five years. The national ministry of Woman's Missionary Union developed from a pilot program in San Antonio, and now 150 sites operate nationwide.
___Texas Baptists help support Christian Women's Job Corps through gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions. The 2003 offering includes $24,000 to provide expenses for a volunteer coordinator at each of the 22 Christian Women's Job Corps sites in Texas, start-up funds for new sites, as well as money for training materials and to meet emergency needs.
___In 2000 and 2001, nearly 700 Texas women enrolled in the Christian Women's Job Corps program, and about half completed the 10-week program. At least 234 are employed now, and 110 made professions of faith in Jesus Christ as a result of involvement in the program, according to Christine Hockin-Boyd, consultant with Woman's Missionary Union of Texas. Last year, the Rio Grande Valley site in Mercedes alone accounted for 22 professions of faith.
___Each woman represents a changed life and potentially a changed family, according to Denise Kopriva, coordinator for the University Baptist Mission site in Lubbock. In 1999, the office of communications for the Texas Department of Human Services named the Lubbock Christian Women's Job Corps one of the four most successful faith-based welfare-to-work programs in the state.
___"They are capable of being productive citizens. They are worthy of good jobs and of a nice place to live. They don't have to sleep on the floor. They don't have to worry about how they're going to pay their bills," said Kopriva, a member of Monterrey Baptist Church in Lubbock.
___"I want them to have a career, not a job, where they have benefits and retirement and their children are taken care of. They can move out of the slums, so their children can get away from the drugs and the guns and running in the streets.
___"I want them to come out with self-esteem and self-worth--to realize that the Lord put them on this earth for a purpose."
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