[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4065-S4066]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FOCUS: HOPE

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask to have printed in the 
Congressional Record an article which appears in the April 19, 1999, 
edition of Forbes magazine regarding Focus: HOPE, an extraordinary 
organization in Detroit, Michigan which is dedicated to human 
development.
  The article follows.

                      [From Forbes, Apr. 19, 1999]

                          Teach A Man To Fish

                          (By Srikumar S. Rao)

       Eleanor Josaitis can remember the moment in March 1965 her 
     life changed. She was in her comfortable home in a Detroit 
     suburb watching a television program on the Nuremberg trials. 
     A news flash cut in: Selma, Ala. Mounted troopers, wielding 
     electric cattle prods, charged peaceful protesters. Minutes 
     earlier she was pondering what she would have done if she had 
     been in Nazi Germany. A new question intruded: ``What will I 
     do now?''
       Two years later Detroit exploded in flames. Touring the 
     decimated area with Father William Cunningham, her weekend 
     parish priest, they swore to alleviate the suffering. But 
     what could be accomplished by a housewife with two young 
     children and a radical priest trained as an English 
     professor?
       Quite a bit, actually. Focus: Hope, the nonprofit 
     organization they birthed in Detroit's rubble, today occupies 
     well over a million square feet on 40 acres of that once-
     devastated area. It started with urgent but limited goals--
     feeding poor mothers and their infants. Now it has grown into 
     a powerful and world-recognized job-training machine. An 
     education boot camp has lifted nearly 5,000 city residents to 
     high school equivalence and placed them in real jobs. A 
     machinist institute has trained 1,800 urban youngsters in 
     reading blueprints and operating numerically controlled 
     machine tools, and put them in high-paying positions with 
     outfits like GM, Ford and Chrysler. A Center for Advanced 
     Technologies has just started to churn out engineers with 
     bachelor's degrees. Next up: an information technology 
     center, funded by the likes of Microsoft and Cisco Systems, 
     to teach computer skills.
       Josaitis, age 67, built Focus: Hope on the simple 
     proposition that many of the chronically underemployed yearn 
     for an opportunity to haul themselves into the middle class. 
     She says: ``We are failing our poorest citizens when we don't 
     provide them the means to break out of their poverty.''
       What welfare official has not echoed precisely that 
     thought? The Focus: Hope difference is one of execution. 
     Josaitis runs the centers with businesslike efficiency and 
     sets demanding standards for the students. She coddles no 
     one: Use profane language after two warnings and you're out. 
     Steal something and you're out immediately. She believes that 
     discipline and responsibilitly are keys to improvement. 
     Rewards must be earned.
       That philosophy has made Focus: Hope a landmark in Detroit. 
     It has attracted more than 50,000 Detroit-area volunteers, 
     including big names at the car companies, like Ford Chief 
     Executive Jacques Nasser. A sizable business itself, Focus: 
     Hope employs more than 800 people and has a budget of $68 
     million, half from government, a third from contracts with 
     for-profit companies and the rest from private contributions.
       That's eons away from the rather inauspicious beginnings. 
     To get closer to the problem, Eleanor and her husband, the 
     owner of a chain of hobby shops, sold their house and moved 
     into an integrated neighborhood in 1968. Her mother, alarmed 
     for their safety, even hired a lawyer to try to wrest custody 
     of her children away. Eleanor retained custody and bears no 
     animosity toward her mother.
       She and Father Cunningham, who died of cancer in 1997, 
     began with food. Tapping federal funding, they launched a 
     tiny program to distribute food to pregnant women and small 
     children. It still does that, at last count for 46,000 people 
     a month (half the peak in 1991). The program succeeded so 
     well that it became a model for similar efforts in other 
     states. A food program for senior citizens followed.
       But Josaitis and Father Cunningham wanted to turn the 
     recipients into productive jobholders. They browbeat and 
     cajoled federal agencies and private foundations to raise 
     $250,000 to start a job-training program. In 1981 they opened 
     the Machinist Training Institute to train Detroit's youths in 
     machining and metalworking, especially for the automobile 
     industry.
       It's an intensive program that can last for 57 weeks if 
     students choose the entire curriculum. Students spend the 
     first 5 weeks, eight hours a day, learning blueprint reading 
     and some math and working the lathe. On the shop floor they 
     later learn to work with mills, grinders and computer-
     controlled machine tools. In the classroom they learn more 
     about manufacturing theory and quite a bit about computer-
     aided design and manufacturing.
       In a more advanced program they work on commercial 
     production contracts for about $7 an hour in between doses of 
     classroom instruction.
       Among the students who start the machinist school, 70% stay 
     to the end. For those that do, the job placement rate is 
     100%. ``We have placed our graduates in all sorts of machine 
     shops,'' says Josaitis. ``Some had never previously hired a 
     minority or a female.''
       Josaitis has structured tuition to reflect her philosophy: 
     a helping hand--with strings attached. Tuition for mti is 
     $14,500. Government grants pay about half that, depending on 
     income. The balance is paid through a 5% loan from Focus: 
     Hope. Repayment begins 90 days after graduation--by which 
     time most students have jobs. A further incentive to land and 
     keep a job is that many employers, like General Motors, will 
     pick up half of the student's loan payments.
       William Motts is one of the success stories. He dropped out 
     of high school in the 11th grade and got his girlfriend 
     pregnant at 18. He pulled in $6 an hour as a maintenance 
     worker at a hotel, struggling to help support his daughter.
       But he caught a break. He was steered to mti by his 
     father's friend who knew Father Cunningham. He entered the 
     program in 1992 and never looked back. In 1998, he got a 
     bachelor's degree in manufacturing engineering from the 
     University of Detroit, Mercy. Today Motts, 25, is an engineer 
     at General Motors earning around $45,000, and married to a 
     dental hygienist.
       ``Focus: Hope challenged me to push my boundaries,'' Motts 
     says. ``It forced me to be disciplined. It gave me very 
     marketable skills.''
       Focus: Hope helps students surmount practical problems. For 
     examples, it runs a day care center and before- and after-
     school programs, so parents can attend classes without worry.
       Josaitis also doesn't want to discard potential candidates 
     who don't have the math, reading or social skills to succeed 
     in a program for machinists. So for the past ten years an 
     educational boot camp called Fast Track has taken students--
     average age 26--with 8th grade math and reading skills and 
     brought them up two grade levels. And two years ago, 
     realizing some students needed even more help, she started 
     First Step, to offer more remedial works.
       More than 80% of those who enter Fast Track finish the 
     program and go on the Machinist Training Institute. Thomas 
     Murphy, a former sergeant major for American troops in Europe 
     who runs Fast Track, can take some credit for that. He is 
     bluff, tough and good-natured. The seven-week Fast Track 
     program runs all day Monday through Friday, and Saturday 
     mornings.
       ``Saturday classes serve clear notice that we expect real 
     hard work and commitment from them in return for the 
     opportunity we provide,'' Murphy says. Clock in at 8:01 and 
     you get a demerit. Enough demerits and you get booted out.
       Murphy was initially shocked when a candidate asked him if 
     there was a place where he could nap during breaks. Turned 
     out that he left the institute at 4 p.m., worked an eight-
     hour shift at a job to support his family and was back at 8 
     a.m. the next day. Murphy found him a place to nap and 
     overlooked occasional tardiness.
       ``One of our graduates called me up the other day to 
     announce that he was missing his first day of work in 
     years,'' says Murphy. ``He was closing on a brand new home. 
     His home. The first home anyone in his family had ever 
     owned.''
       Josaitis also understands that getting and holding a job 
     requires certain social skills. Thus trainees are taught how 
     to shake hands, make eye contact and absolutely, positively 
     get to jobs on time.
       Every month Josaitis brings a group of students to a 
     formally laid out dining room where she teaches table 
     manners, from which fork to use to how to make small talk. 
     ``I want you to feel comfortable when you are invited to the 
     White House,'' she tells them. She also takes trainees to 
     formal affairs, such as the opening of the Michigan Opera 
     hosted by Ford's Nasser.
       In 1993 Focus: Hope decided to offer its best and brightest 
     students a further step up the ladder. It opened the Center 
     for Advanced Technologies, which, in collaboration with local 
     colleges, offers bachelor and associate degrees in 
     manufacturing engineering and technology. The executive dean 
     is Lloyd

[[Page S4066]]

     Reuss, who took the nonpaying job after he was ousted as 
     president of General Motors in 1993.
       CAT students get classroom instruction plus work in a for-
     profit manufacturing company located on Focus: Hope grounds. 
     Using next-generation equipment from Cincinnati Milacron, 
     says Reuss, students produce machined parts for outfits 
     including GM, Ford and the Department of Defense. Students 
     accept a below-market $8 an hour on these contracts. In 
     return, they get free tuition.
       The hands-on part of this apprenticeship is as important as 
     the classroom instruction. Denise Ankofski, candidate for an 
     associate degree and single mother of a 6-year-old son, was 
     milling brake shoes for 5-ton trucks on a defense contract 
     and figured she could do it better by splitting operations 
     and performing them on different machines. She was encouraged 
     to give a technical presentation and her suggestion reduced 
     cycle time on some operations by 80%.
       When they graduate, CAT students do extremely well. Last 
     year the six CAT bachelor graduates were paid an average of 
     $47,200, compared with the $45,300 earned by Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology mechanical engineering graduates. 
     ``Graduates are not hired for diversity reasons or charity,'' 
     says Reuss. ``They are hired because they are skilled workers 
     with an excellent ethic.''

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