Last month, 18 HCDI resident youth graduated from an intensive job readiness training. Preparing the teens for the employment world, this week-long training segues smoothly into summer work opportunities in the Home City and Housing Management Resources offices. Suit Up Springfield and Dress For Success attended as well, providing professional clothing specifically sized for the graduates.
Jamie Martinez lives in the Twiggs Estates II redevelopment, and recently started his first job working with HCDI Project Manager Jasper McCoy. He works with McCoy at the Home City office Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. “This is my first job, I’m enjoying it, they are preparing me well,” Martinez said. McCoy is also helping him explore scholarship support to further his education and career.
“It’s great to see a fellow Sci-Tech highschooler with such bright talent and potential … he’s given me perspective of what Springfield has to offer for future generations. He tackles problems head on, learns fast when challenged, and adapts to responsibility,” McCoy said.
Emma Woods, the Dress for Success liaison at the event, was an HCDI Liberty Hill Town Houses resident in the 1990s. At the time, She was part of a program similar to HUD’s Family Self Sufficiency program, back then the system was called a “Coop”. In the coop model, part of the residents’ rent was put away into an escrow account, and over time that account grew into a hefty savings account. In addition, as part of the program, day care and after care services made it possible for Woods to work when her mother couldn’t help out with her small kids.
In 1994 she was able to move out and buy a house of her own. She put the money saved through the coop program into a down payment on a house off of St. James Ave. She then enrolled at AIC and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice in 2003, and then a Masters Degree in Human Resource Development in non-profit management. Later she went to Cambridge College and completed a Masters in Education in substance abuse and mental health. After graduating, she went on to teach in the Springfield Public School system.
As Martinez and others embark on their entry into the job world with HCDI and Housing Management Resources, Woods reflected on her fruitful career and expressed gratitude that she can still give back in her retirement through Dress for Success. She reflected on her time as an HCDI resident. “There was a lot of support,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here today with a bachelor and two masters … [HCDI] inspired me to do better and do more.”