Program to help women find hope, jobs

By Cathy Spaulding
Phoenix Staff Writer

March 24, 2008 12:04 am

— The way Joan McWilliams sees it, women can find good jobs in Muskogee; they just need to know where to look.
“It’s not that there is no opportunity. It’s just not advertised well,” she said. “People don’t know where to look or how to use resources, and you see hopelessness building.”
McWilliams and other members of Timothy and Central Baptist churches are working to help women find hope and find jobs through a new Muskogee chapter of the Christian Women Job Corps.
Supported by the Women’s Missionary Union, an auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian Women’s Job Corps offers women job skills and life skills in a Christian context.
“It came from Southern Baptist women wanting to see children get out of poverty,” said McWilliams, an advisory board member for the Muskogee chapter. “We decided that the best way to get kids out of generational poverty was to get women out of generational poverty. Our goal is to really help people get out of poverty.”
She said the program is based on a passage from Jeremiah: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
The Muskogee corps operates out of a second-floor suite at Central Baptist Church, 624 East Side Blvd.
“All we’re waiting for now is for women to come,” McWilliams said. “Any woman can come to the Bible study, and we will introduce them to the Christian Women’s Job Corps.
“I grew up in this town, and it breaks your heart to talk to people” who see no hope, she said. “You see an invisible line people draw for themselves.”
She said the Christian Women’s Job Corps seeks “to be a bridge from one side to the other.”
The women work one-on-one with female mentors, she said, adding that the mentor would be “a woman who knows what she believes.”
The mentor serves as a tutor, guide and encourager while the woman is going through the program. Each woman’s emotional, educational and spiritual needs are assessed throughout the program.
McWilliams said program participants will have a covenant agreement to help them identify their goals. The women meet with their mentors each week.
“You set your goal and we say, ‘Let’s figure out what you need to do to meet your goal this week,’” McWilliams said. “It is one mentor with one woman every week. It’s the concept of building hope with people.”
All the women also participate in a group Bible study, specifically chosen to fit the needs of the participants, McWilliams said.
One way the Christian Women Job Corps seeks to help women is by networking with agencies or programs such as Workforce Oklahoma.
That “helps people gain a sense of community,” McWilliams said.
She said the program also will offer life skills classes and work with the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.
Once the program gets its nonprofit status, the job corps could seek grants to help send women to Connors State College or Indian Capital Technology Center, she said.
“I believe this program will do great things for this town,” McWilliams said. Every time you take someone from feeling there is no hope to thinking there is hope, you see the light cracking through. And that’s what Christians are commanded to do, to be the light.”

More info

Information: Call 681-0720, or e-mail: cwjcmuskogee@yahoo.com.
Reach Cathy Spaulding at 918-684-2928 or Click Here to Send Email