Fast Company article for March 1999 "Hope is a Weapon" By Curtis Sittenfeld February: March 1999 issue, page `179 Prepared by Vince Crary

This article is about Eleanor Josaitis and how she, along with Father William Cunningham, started a nonprofit organization called Focus:Hope. In the beginning, Focus:Hope had one primary service: "feeding infants born to poor women". Focus:Hope was started in 1968.

Focus:Hope today is a Detroit Landmark. The campus occupies forty acres. The organization has 51,000 volunteers and 850 employees with an annual budget of $72 million. The food program feeds 48,000 people.

The article talks a lot about the Machinist Training Institute (MTI) started in 1981. To date, more than 1500 students have learned precision machining and metalworking skills. People go through Core 1, a twenty-six-week course "that covers manufacturing theory, blueprint reading, and technical drafting". Students that complete core 1 classes may enroll in Core 2 classes: another twenty-six-week course " in which they learn to work with manual and computer-controlled mills, grinders, and lathes". Core 2 students have a 100% job placement rate.

The article also goes into other training MTI offers in its TEC Machinery Inc. plant, a for-profit engineering company located on the forty acre campus.

The thing that impresses me about the Focus:Hope approach is that:" students choose to enroll in each program, and once they do, they are held to non-negotiable performance standards." "Drug testing takes place at the discretion of instructors; neither tardiness nor unexplained absences are tolerated; and lowering standards for individual students is prohibited." The retention rate of the program is 75%.

Focus:Hope has proven that you can have high standards for a training program and that people will not only meet the standards but excel. In this day and age of thinking we need to accommodate everyone's needs with lower standards or special rules, Focus:Hope has proven this wrong.

I enjoyed the article, not because Focus:Hope has become such a big entity in Detroit, but rather to hear how a well-structured training program with strict standards is working and producing graduates that are in demand.

How does this fit into Extension work? Often times in working with people, you can see there is a need for change. It may be easier to tell people what they want to hear versus what they need to hear so you don't offend them. Stop and think of Focus:Hope. Set standards. Help people excel.

In discussing this article with others, we acknowledged Focus:Hope is quite a tribute to what a volunteer organization can accomplish. Everyone I visited with liked the high standard approach to the programs offered. People, given the opportunity, want to improve. It was interesting to talk about a program that has high standards for students and is a success.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 1999

Answers

Thanks for your comments on this article. It truly can be an inspiration to see the positive benefits that this nonprofit organizaton has been able to contribute.

What can or will you do to use some of these same strategies in your extension work? You mentioned that others that you talked to liked to see the high standards in place. How would they feel with those same high standards enforced in their organizations? How would the clients react?

-- Anonymous, April 19, 1999