The Job Training Program That Actually Works

The key to TCR's success is its personal empowerment training. "Empowerment" can sound like mumbo-jumbo to some participants at first. At a class last week, Quinten Osgood—Roberts's old empowerment instructor—reviewed the basics with a new group. "It's all about the thought process. It's all about perception. How we think or feel," he said. And later: "It's about helping you look inside yourself for solutions." The class filled out work sheets and called out answers. They sat in foldout chairs, arrayed in a circle.

Like most participants, Roberts applied to TCR because she needed a job. But she now says the program changed her outlook on life, too. "I thought it would be a great free training program, I'd get my computer skills up. But it turned out to be so much more than that. It really did," Roberts says. When she speaks, you can hear the confidence in her voice.