Colorado Women's Employment and Education
Laurie A. Harvey
1111 Osage St., Suite 230
Denver, Colo. 80204
(303) 892-8444

THIS is welfare reform: This outstanding, 12-year-old program focuses closely and intensively on a single mission -- moving single parents (predominantly women but also some men) from the welfare rolls to a payroll.

Based on a model conceived in Texas during the 1960s by an activist nun named Lupe Angliano, who sought unsuccessfully to install its basic principles as national welfare policy during the Johnson administration, CWEE operates on simple, direct premises: Locate women on welfare who want to work but lack the skills and support, and give them both in the course of a quick but intense curriculum.

CWEE workers go out into the community, knocking on doors, posting fliers and even staffing information tables in supermarkets on food-stamp and welfare-check day, rounding up potential participants, women or men with dependent children at home, who have a high-school diploma or the equivalent and who are unemployed and on welfare.

After screening to ensure that the participants don't have any current problems (drugs, family difficulties and the like) that would stymie their efforts to find work, individuals attend a five-week, 200-hour course that focuses on building work skills and remedial reading and math, if necessary, as well as "workplace competency," self-esteem and personal development. Participants are referred to affordable child-care and other support services, and ideally qualify for Job Training Partnership Act money to help pay for it. When the course is complete, graduates are expected to seek employment immediately -- with the help of CWEE staff and equipment -- although in some cases, additional or advanced training may be available, including CWEE's own, brand-new Computer Training Center, an additional five-week course that qualifies graduates for word-processing jobs and other office work requiring computer familiarity.

Even after graduates are placed in jobs, CWEE keeps up with them for at least a year, to keep tabs on their progress and to be available with support and assistance if unexpected problems develop. CWEE has a staff of 10 and a $360,000 budget this year.

In 1993, according to CWEE's statistics, the program served 164 single parents, of whom 82 (exactly half) were placed in jobs, while 16 more entered short-term technical or occupational training. Since the program was incorporated in 1982, Harvey estimates it has served 1,500 people and placed one-third to one-half of them in jobs . . . a significant number, although only a fraction of Denver's estimated 15,000 welfare recipients.

"For every family on welfare, the government spends up to $12,000 a year," according to the group's mission report. "CWEE graduates, on average, will earn $14,000 in their first year of private-sector employment. In total, CWEE saves over $800,000 of taxpayer support to welfare annually."

(Last visit: Autumn 1994)

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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