Employment Services

Typically lacking marketable vocational skills and recent or steady work experience, homeless men and women face multiple barriers as they seek to enter the workforce and rebuild their lives.  Inspiration Corporation addresses this need with three initiatives.

The Employment Project
The Employment Project helps individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless identify career options, make choices, and ultimately gain stability through employment.  The Employment Project offers career counseling, employment preparation and financial literacy training, free voice mail, networking opportunities with businesses and professionals, and job placement and retention support to homeless adults who want to become employed. Volunteers provide additional assistance and support to program participants who are engaged in job searches or enrolled in GED classes or other educational programs.
The Employment Project >>

Cafe Too
Cafe Too is a 13-week restaurant skills training program designed to provide students with the tools they need to secure and retain entry-level jobs in the food service industry.  The intensive training focuses on basic culinary skills and concepts, following and taking direction, teamwork, sanitation and safety, and restaurant service.  An employment specialist helps students develop job-readiness skills, and each student is tested to receive a City of Chicago food service sanitation management certificate.   Cafe Too students gain hands-on experience preparing and serving meals to the paying public during the internship period of the program.  The internship gives students real-life work experience and, when successfully completed, a reference for future employers.  Job placement assistance expedites their entry into employment, where students can immediately apply and develop their newly acquired skills. Finally, post-placement services ensure that graduates are meeting employers’ expectations, receiving assistance in dealing with conflicts, and accessing retention incentives such as education opportunities.
Cafe Too >>

In 2005, Cafe Too completed the second year of a partnership with Heartland Human Care Services to provide restaurant skills training to refugees, mainly from east Africa, and developed a new partnership with St. Leonard’s Ministries to provide similar training to homeless ex-offenders.

Community Voice Mail

Community Voice Mail is a 24-hour message-taking and -retrieval system that provides an individual phone number and free message retrieval to as many as 1,400 phoneless Chicagoans at one time, providing them with a lifeline to potential jobs, homes, healthcare, family, and services.  Inspiration Corporation spearheads the Chicago Community Voice Mail project and maintains all software, hardware, and necessary trunk lines. Within minutes using a touch-tone phone, workers at more than 50 human services agencies across Chicago can start clients on Community Voice Mail with their own private 7-digit number, a personal greeting, a secure access code, and a “1-800” number from which they can retrieve messages.  Inspiration Corporation is the Chicago-area partner of the national Community Voice Mail Federation.
Community Voicemail Program