City-run initiative designed to increase workforce

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

“If someone knocks you off your chair, that’s on them. But if we come back a week later and you’re still on the ground, then that’s on you.” Those were the words of encouragement from Mayor Mitch Landrieu on June 11 to 17 graduates of the city’s STRIVE NOLA program designed to hone the skills of disadvantaged residents and ready them to enter the workforce “prepared to work” and “determined to succeed.”

The graduates—ranging in age from early 20s to mid-50s—are the second crop of students to emerge from the four-week program. Angela Cryer, the director of STRIVE, told those gathered at Gallier Hall for the commencement ceremony that the four weeks were spent breaking mental and professional barriers to employment. Cryer said the process was challenging but offered effusive praise for the graduates.

New Orleans Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu and Ashleigh Gardere, Sr. Advisor to Mayor Mitch Landrieu and
executive director of the Network for Economic Opportunity, stand with the 2015 graduates of Strive
NOLA, a city-run program designed to hone the skills of disadvantaged residents and ready them to enter the workforce.

New Orleans has historically been gripped by chronic unemployment, with just half of all qualified job applicants, who are Black men, winning job interviews, according to information from the mayor’s office. The city’s joblessness rate is compounded by its rate of functional illiteracy, which, by some estimates, is as high as 40 percent and more than 300 residents return to the city each month from prison.

“We have left far too many of our residents behind,” Landrieu said. “Even before Katrina, we weren’t doing what we were supposed to do.” But now, the mayor asserts the city is moving in the right direction. “I talk to CEOs about you,” he told the graduates. “When I talk to the president, I mention you. He knows about you.” Landrieu said programs like STRIVE—a component of the city’s NOLA For Life strategy—are essential to grabbing the attention of national employers that are mulling plans to set up shop in the Big Easy. “It’s important for them to know that people in New Orleans punch at a higher weight.”

“I could be incarcerated right now,” said graduate Chaunard Daniels. “My probation officer gave me a choice: go to STRIVE or go to jail. I am so grateful.” Some graduates spoke through tears while accepting their diplomas, thanking program administrators, Landrieu, and their fellow cohorts for the experience.

“When I started STRIVE, I had just gotten out of prison and I didn’t want to be here without pay because I needed a job,” said Rhonda Oliver, one of two women who graduated from the program. “But I had some serious issues and I was tired of making poor choices and disappointing my family. Now I am here standing on my own two feet and that’s what I want to be able to tell an employer.” But Oliver said the job readiness program alone is not a recipe for success. “I realize that STRIVE doesn’t guarantee a job, just as a college degree doesn’t guarantee a job. In order to be employed you have to be phenomenal.”

While the overall unemployment rate in New Orleans is just south of the national average, joblessness among Black residents remains stubbornly high, with just over half of Black men in New Orleans of prime working age — 25 to 52 — unemployed at any given time, according to the mayor’s office. Sixteen of the 17 graduates are Black, underscoring the city’s challenges stemming from Black unemployment. But without regard to any of the city’s daunting statistics, each graduate appeared to burst with enthusiasm last week, with one graduate saying of the experience, “It’s worth it, ‘cause I’m worth it.”

This article originally published in the June 15, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.