Workforce development for system-impacted Angelenos

Income Inequality

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

ManifestWorks was born from an understanding that those impacted by foster care, incarceration and homelessness are often blocked from the very opportunities that could help them escape the long-term impacts of system involvement and generational poverty. Our earliest champions were connected by decades advocating for foster and justice-involved children, and united in their advocacy for those locked up in California prisons. Finding opportunity and a way to sidestep the steep barriers to a healthy future was the original vision of ManifestWorks. Since 2014, we have found the cycles of institutionalization can be overcome with access to living-wage jobs, meaningful mentorships, and a robust, supportive network that allows alumni to bring their best to work. To date, ManifestWorks has connected hundreds of alumni to living-wage careers, seeded thousands of freelance jobs and as many relationships for sustaining employment.

Our workforce-development organization creates a direct pathway to living-wage jobs for those impacted by foster care, incarceration, and homelessness. We know living-wage jobs transform lives profoundly, but the barriers to employment for our participants make finding a job - even a low-paying one - insurmountable without the intervention we provide. Well-paying jobs with upward mobility have immediate and transformative impacts on our participants, their families and their communities. Those completing ManifestWorks see their wages rise an average of 400 percent within one year of being accepted. We see dramatic reductions in the reliance on public benefits of all kinds, and we see significant markers to demonstrate wealth acquisition, measured around access to banking, increased savings and improved levels of home ownership, all information demonstrated against baseline surveys collected by applicants. Significantly, none of our active alumni have ever returned to prison.

ManifestWorks' workforce model has demonstrated extraordinary success, and we believe we can scale programming to serve more people while maintaining our impact. There is no question the employment problems facing those returning from prison, living in homelessness and for opportunity youth are more dire than ever. ManifestWorks' ability to move our alumni into living-wage employment will impact individuals, families and communities. Not only will we help cut reliance reliance on welfare and move people out of poverty, but we actively help build wealth to create generational opportunities. Our curriculum includes extensive financial literacy instruction and a new program makes all alumni eligible for a savings and investment class where we will match $1,000 of habitual alumni savings with stock market investment account designed for habitual investments, connecting alumni to passive wealth acquisition. Our next program will focus on helping alumni move towards real estate acquisition.

Our logic model explains the key ways our program is designed to impact those we serve, and for ManifestWorks as a whole, we define success very specifically: wage gains that are ascendent over time; career or professional growth (increased union membership or upward career mobility); decreased reliance on public benefits; zero recidivism; and increased wealth as measured by access to banking; increased savings and holding passive wealth generators (stock portfolio, home ownership, etc.). Additionally we track qualitative data: community engagement, health, as well as feelings about life and career prospects, contributions to family and well-being. We collect extensive data from all applicants and have done so since our inception. For all graduates, we collect follow up data annually, where we measure programs against our success metrics. Graduates are tracked annually, indefinitely.