The Drake House

The problem, that we are committed to solving, is the barriers, biases, and the lack of resources that African American moms are faced with in the workplace which prevent them from being able to achieve upward mobility and professional success.

Our solution is to establish  a Professional Woman’s Career Network that will provide a support system to include access to jobs, skill matching, purposeful coaching, mentoring, and sponsorship, as well as job competency training and education. This Network will consist of  employment partners, training and educational entities, workforce development agencies and non-profits that serve women. The Network will take a comprehensive approach to understand the challenges  women face and research strategies that can be implemented to mitigate or eliminate   these challenges. This is a team approach with subject matter experts in multiple disciplines and will offer the collaboration needed to tackle these systemic issues.

The Drake House is working to solve The Reimagining Pathways to Employment Challenge to match current and future employer and industry needs with education providers, workforce development programs, and diverse job seekers. We are a crisis residential assessment center for homeless women and children in the North Fulton area of Atlanta, Georgia. 

Our agency offers immediate and temporary housing and programs designed to provide stability for the children and assist the family in working toward housing self-sufficiency. The target population is single mothers with minor children. We are the only agency in the area offering an emergency residential program, serving approximately 50 families with 100 children per year. The core component is preparing moms for livable paying jobs and providing career coaching. We have continued to successfully partner with employers and technical institutions.  In 2019, we coached 46 moms, provided 400+ coaching hours, (18) with securing new employment, while others secured promotions or an increase in salary.  

The unemployment rate is a contributing factor to the lack of available livable paying jobs, not only for North Fulton, but for Georgia. The 2021 estimated unemployment rate for women in Georgia is 59.4% according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Our solution is forming a Professional Woman’s Career Network (PWCN) that will host an ongoing virtual round table of employers, training and educational entities, workforce development agencies and non-profits that serve women. The solution has he following four components: 

Business Career Navigators / Mentors  works with the mom to help guide her through the corporate culture roadblocks.

Paid Internships – provide moms with income from an outside source while learning the job and building skills. (target small and medium size employers). With this opportunity, interns will be able to showcase their talents and gain the needed experience to enter the workforce in a career building capacity.  

Collaborative Partnerships –  partnerships with technical schools, workforce development agencies, employers, childcare facilities, and other non-profit agencies that support women. This component is where jobs are identified and matched with the mom. The target outcomes are: in-kind training opportunities, certifications, jobs skill assessments, job placement, childcare facilities providing discount childcare and untraditional hours of care. 

Virtual Advisory Roundtable – This roundtable will be a policy decision making board where obstacles are addressed and resolved. The representatives will be made up of decision makers that represent the Collaborative Partnership entities.

The target population is unemployed and underemployed African American moms. Our agency currently works directly with this population in the North Fulton area of Atlanta, Georgia.  Our Career Coach meets individually with each  mom weekly to assess her work skills and talents, update and develop her resume, practice interview skills, and provide career coaching. When the mom is ready, she is then  provided with job listings and qualified candidates are connected with partner employers. 

The Drake House takes a wholistic approach, to serve the needs of the family system. With this approach, this family system is strengthened while meeting unmet needs and setting and reaching goals, empowering the moms as they progress towards self-sufficiency. Our staff works closely with these moms through face to face discussions, weekly workshops, and coaching sessions to assist with resources and navigate obstacles. Our agency also provides the opportunity for moms to hear from an alumnus group of women who have completed our program. By leveraging lessons learned, best practices, and consistently identifying innovative strategies, we offer proactive choices to assist these women on their quest to regain thier independence.

The Profession Women’s Career Network (PWCN) solution creates the opportunity for unemployed and underemployed African American moms to gain exposure to resources, training, and mentors that can help them navigate the work environment. The solution provides employers visibility to a diverse population that can bring increased and improved productivity, profits, employee engagement, and cultural insights into the work environment. The solution also provides skill building and training opportunities that will assist in upward movement and marketability. This solution impacts two dimensions;  match current and future employer and industry needs and increase access to high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building, and training opportunities.

Full-time Staff  - 2

Contractor   - 1

Board Member -1

Volunteers - 2

Organizations that are inclusive and diverse bring together different talents, all of them working towards a common goal, using different sets of skills. The Drake House is intentional and strategic across all components of the organization including recruiting and hiring staff, nominating and selecting board members, and reviewing intake applications of the moms seeking help. Our organization has implemented a framework that focuses on improved recruitment strategy, celebrates employee differences, and listens to employees ideas and new perspectives.  

Our solution is unique because we apply an individual approach and work directly with large and small business recruiters to identify the skills needed for each individual mom. This approach  allows the employer to match the mom with the right position. We work with a staffing agency who administers skill assessments to help our moms identify their strengths.  Once training and/or skills gaps are identified we leverage free online training and educational institutions as options  for our moms to gain the training/skills they need to obtain better paying jobs.

Our research shows that other agencies that provide services to women, usually do not provide or support additional services for the children, and do not link moms directly with businesses with opportunities for higher paying jobs and career path options. Our solution consciously and purposefully works to equip moms with the resources, skills, and tools to secure livable paying positions. We do not stop after they are employed, our solution continues to work with the mom and employer to determine what we can do to ensure both the employer and employee have a solid and productive relationship. To support sustainability, coaching and skill development is continued throughout this process to assist the mom in increasing income and upward movement.

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Activity - Outputs - ST outputs - MT outputs - LT Outputs

Business Career Navigators - Mentor Sessions/ Gain employment -Navigate onboarding /  Become acclimated - Gain skills / Become a subject matter expert in your role  - Advance in current role / Be promoted into roles with increased responsibility

Activity - Outputs - ST outputs - MT outputs - LT Outputs

Paid Internship/Job Shadow - Obtain a job - Learn new skills/ Demonstrate aptitude to learn - Improve skills Execute skills - Obtain full time employment 

Collaborative Partnership - Provide moms with wrap abound services and resources - Mitigate roadblocks for childcare, interview skills, and vocational skills - Improve interpersonal skills and confidence/Improve professional skills - Become independent and self-sufficient; ability to support self and children

1. Use the Professional Woman's Career Network (PWCN) to develop a innovative virtual Interactive technology solution or application that can be accessed from anywhere and link moms with resources and enable partners to find clients that fit their need.

2. Expand throughout Georgia and maybe southeast, if possible.

3. Package the program to make it easy for others to replicate and gear toward their needs and culture. This will include measurable metrics and consistent process improvement.

 4. Showcase best practices that show proven sustainability in employment quality and grown within PWCN. 

To expand the program to include more support and recipients there is a need for financial support. This addition of funding would impact:

1. The expansion of this project to a more virtual interactive technology solution or application that would make it easy for moms to self select, and for partners to review and input job leads, and education institutions to include trainings and online job assessment tools. Each client would have a confidential profile with all their skills, training, etc. All the data gathered from each partner will be in the application and clients will be matched with job or company, etc.

2. Support for the paid internship program. The barriers of the workforce economy on employers will be addressed by enabling them to get trained employees by opting into the internship program.

3. Seed money to address the unmet need for non-traditional childcare hours, to remove the limitations that come from only being able to take advantage of opportunities within the restricted hours of existing services.

4. Expanding the geographic area and the funding for PWCN. 

5. Buy-in from respected businesses and an agreement to pilot the program in their company.

One idea is to expand the geographical area of potential job opportunities 

1. Continue to seek out grant opportunities, donor contributions, etc.

2. Reach out to small and medium size companies to start to support the program by providing salary to employees from another funding source. Guidelines will be determined to insure the mom and the employer benefits. This is also a opportunity for the employer to hire the mom as a paid full-time employee. 

3. Because there are no existing childcare facilities with nontraditional hours, meeting this unmet need is a critical component of this Challenge. We are in conversation with several agencies to assist with this component. There is space Space is available in an existing childcare facility therefore, funds are needed to develop the afterhours program, and hire and train staff for operations. 

4. More collaboration with agencies that serve moms throughout Georgia and other states. Define ways the virtual roundtable can help engage businesses and champion the program

5. Developing more partnerships with businesses and gathering data of successes. Develop marketing strategy to showcase successes for all partners involved.

The data collections would include

• How many moms received employment?
• The types of jobs and types of industries
• Number of internships provided.
• Feedback from employers on how internships impacted the business.
• Feedback from moms on how internships impacted their growth. 
• Starting salary compared to the salary after one year of employment
• The number of moms promoted after the first year.
• Certifications or trainings moms received.
• Identify sustainable factors that heled our moms to succeed.

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The team is well equipped not only with the experience of working with the target population but being moms in the workplace. Five of the six team members are mothers and have experience the bias in the workplace. Four of the six work directly with the population we are targeting.  All are college educated and have used the certification or online training process to gain or sharpen skills to improve their value. Five are African American and understand the struggles of having to be better than the average employee to be considered for upward mobility.  The team has first hand knowledge of the power on mentorship in the workplace and understands that there is an unspoken culture that new comers don't know and need that insider's help. 

Several have encountered roadblocks and challenges based on race and gender and because of their education and support system figured out how to leverage various resources and learn how to navigate the corporate environment for success and professional growth. 

Many years of direct service have been invested by team members advocating for African American moms in empowering, encouraging, and providing necessary resources whenever possible. 

Businesses - LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ryder, Kimberly Clark, Marta, WellStar, Northside

Educational Institutions - Gwinnett Technological Institute

Community Agencies: North Fulton Improvement 

Network (NFIN) , North Fulton Community Charites

The Mauldin Group -The Mauldin Group’s primary focus is offering the collaborative effort of web designers, social media managers, paid media strategists, copywriters, and SEO specialists at an affordable rate for small to mid-sized companies. - This group will provide free CEU certifications to the members of the Professional Woman's Career Network.

Our clients are homeless single moms seeking financial independence. This group of the population has not been afforded the opportunities or how to access needed resources that many other populations have. The solution is giving them a hand-up and way they can grow personally and feel good about being able to provide for their children. The bias in the workplace are hard for educated Black women and even more intimidating for women with a little less self-confidence. The Professional Woman's Career Network is a safe professional place for African American women to see themselves and others like them excel into better paying jobs. The Network can create life changing roadmaps for these women.

Career services, including the funding of the Career Coach position, is a line item in our nonprofit budget of 3.1 million dollars. The income to operate this 501C3 organization is received through grants opportunities, fundraising efforts, faith based, corporate and individual support, sponsorships, and foundation contributions. Board support around new initiatives is sought during program expansion efforts, for additional funding.

Funding for the expansion of Career Services is not presently being sought. We are in the last 6 months of a 3 year strategic plan. The addition of these initiatives, stated in the Challenge Grant, will need to be included in the next 3 year plan.

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The first year estimation for paid internships - 85K

Daycare support - 3-4 daycares - 5k each = 20k

Resources and equipment - 20k 

The Drake House has worked on this project for almost two years and has seem the accomplishments of the moms involved. Moms have gained, employed, developed career paths, and have increased their income. Our team has direct connection to the employer recruiter and communicates our moms strengths and skills. However, we are applying for this challenge because we feel this program can go farther and deeper with a greater impact on African American moms. Financial support is needed to strengthen our work and commitment in the following areas. 

To provide paid internships to moms for at least six months of employment. The funds will also help to encourage more businesses to partner with the program. 

To provide salary for the program administrators.

To purchase needed technology equipment for moms and program (laptops, mobile devices, internet services, etc.).

Mini grants or stipends for daycare facilities that accommodate alternative hours for our moms

To develop long term partnerships that will make an impact on this challenge now and in the future. 

Goals include developing small, medium, large business partnerships and have this program be a part of the business Community Investment Strategy.

To have daycares supported like the Shelter Arms is supported by the Arthur Blank Foundation is in Atlanta with a focus on support for working African American moms.

Have companies to realize that their ROI is greater and their employees are more productive when the stress of picking up their child at a certain time is eliminated and  and supported by their employer.

Employers will identify that a paid internship is an investment that also improves the ROI.

Goggle, Amazon, and other high profile companies as well as industry specific businesses (hospitals, clinics, transportation, hospitality, etc.)

The major technical schools and training facilities

The foundations that support women (Atlanta Woman's Foundation, etc.)

Workforce development agencies and organizations (Urban League, etc.)