About Us

After more than two decades in business, The Cara Program has designed two strategies to support our mission and address the interrelated challenges of homelessness, unemployment, and the reintegration of ex-offenders into society. These strategies and corresponding programs include:

(1) Cultivating individual self-sufficiency through our intensive training, job placement, and retention service delivery model, and;

(2) Creating businesses - or social enterprises - that utilize market solutions to create training opportunities for our students and quality jobs.

At our Traditional Job Training, Placement, and Retention Program, housed at the Thomas and Mary Owens Center in downtown Chicago, approximately 1,200 individuals are referred annually from 80+ referral agencies, homeless shelters, recovery homes, and community organizations in Chicago. The Traditional Program accepts 500 of these individuals into the program based upon one criterion: motivation. Traditional students are guaranteed placement into a permanent job so long as they remain motivated and comply with the organization’s rules including timeliness, honoring commitments, and dressing appropriately. On average, Traditional students are placed in permanent jobs within 6-7 months, but some individuals remain in training for longer. Regardless, Traditional program staff will work with individuals until they find employment, as long as they stay motivated and in compliance with the program. The Cara Program is unique in its employment guarantee. In addition to this unique job guarantee, TCP is also the only agency in Chicago to provide a full year of support after an individual becomes employed and to help students advance in their careers.

The Cara Program’s community-based center, the Quad Communities Center for Working Families (QC CWF), is strategically positioned in the Quad Communities (comprised of North Kenwood, Oakland, and portions of Douglas and Grand Boulevard) to assist jobseekers in their quests for quality employment and financial stability. Unemployment hovers around 20% in this area, and, according to OH Community Partners’ analysis of data from the U.S. Census and the Metro Chicago Information Center for 2010, 50% of Quad Communities households earn less than $25,000 annually. The ultimate goal of the QC CWF is to help residents establish careers, advance professionally, and accumulate assets. The QC CWF provides adults affected by homelessness and poverty with life- and career-skills training, job placement and retention, access to income supports, and financial counseling.

TCP recognizes the value of on-the-job experience in building students’ skills and resumes, which will ultimately make them more competitive in the job market both now and in the future. To provide such hands-on experience we leverage a social enterprise model, which helps us meet our training goals, prepares students for the workforce, and generates revenue for TCP.

Cleanslate: Our first social enterprise, Cleanslate, provides paid internships for TCP students with higher barriers to employment, such as a criminal background or low levels of education, and offers an array of litter abatement, landscaping, snow removal, and special event services throughout Chicago. Cleanslate interns keep Chicago’s neighborhoods beautiful while receiving a weekly stipend, ongoing equipment/safety training, and weekly reviews to measure performance. Cleanslate interns are then eligible to work with our staff to be placed into permanent, quality jobs in the private sector.

Cleanslate launched a new program, Chapter Two, which is a book donation and resale project. Expanding on the business model of St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County, and with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Chapter Two captures books from the waste stream and sells them through various channels, including Amazon, to reduce waste through reuse, generate revenue to support our work, and to create additional training opportunities for our students.

TCP Staffing: Our latest venture, TCP Staffing, was created to respond to the changing needs of many Chicago companies that have adopted temporary-to-permanent (or part-to-full time) hiring models for their open positions. Since the Great Recession began, the labor market has shifted significantly. A growing number of entry-level jobs are now temporary or contract positions. In the face of these labor market trends, TCP Staffing aims to connect TCP students to temporary or part-time opportunities so that they gain work experience; companies have the opportunity to source quality, temporary employees; and TCP builds direct connections to employers while generating revenue. As with Cleanslate, our ultimate goal is to later place students into permanent, quality employment.