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Client Successes
From Limits to Possibilities
Three years ago, Misty Bjorland (25) was homeless, unemployed, and trying to survive another day on the streets. She had dropped out of school at age 16, was in and out of abusive relationships, and turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. “I had a rough life,” she says.
Back then, she thought she deserved a certain kind of life, and could not imagine other possibilities. Her job options, in particular, seemed limited. “I was familiar with working at fast food restaurants. I didn’t think I could do anything else,” she says.
In 2009, Misty enrolled in Multi-Service Center’s THRIVE program, which prepares homeless individuals for re-entry into the workforce through job skills training, job search skills, and paid internships. In THRIVE, she was placed in a paid internship where she learned new skills to prepare her for a different kind of future.
One of those goals was to complete her GED, which she did. The program then helped her focus on getting a steady job.
“Because I hadn’t worked in a long time, I needed to learn job skills and how to write a resume,” she said. Misty did her internship with Multi-Service Center, which hired her after the internship ended.
“THRIVE made a big difference in my life. Without Multi-Service Center, I’d probably still be living in a halfway house trying to figure out what to do with my life,” Misty says. “Because of the THRIVE program, I also was able to qualify for rent assistance which helped me get into my own apartment. With all that, I gained the self-confidence I needed to achieve my goals.”
Today, Misty works as a case manager with Multi-Service Center, helping people who come from backgrounds similar to hers get the resources they need to begin building more promising futures.
“I love the work I’m doing now,” she says. “I’ve really come a long way. I feel I can do almost anything now.”
Thriving in Self-Reliance
Kelly's history is fraught with reliance on drugs and the wrong kind of people. But in 2008, she found her own source of strength…in a hospital bed.
Hospitalized for a drug overdose, Kelly’s life hung in the balance for 13 days. “As I lay in that hospital bed full of tubes working to save me, I had time to really analyze my life,” she said. “I saw the look on my family’s faces, and how disappointed they were in me. I had been living a good life. I had been sober for over five years; I had a college degree and a good job. I was making it.”
But when her boyfriend of several years left her, Kelly turned to her old means of coping, and ended up near death. “I scared a lot of people doing that,” she says.
She worked on her sobriety through treatment and by living in a transitional housing program. While living there, she enrolled in Multi-Service Center’s THRIVE program to help her learn new skills to get back into the workforce.
THRIVE, which stands for Transforming Homelessness and Reestablishing Independence Via Employment, prepares homeless individuals for reentry into the workforce through job skills training, job search skills, and paid internships.
While in THRIVE, Kelly was placed in a paid internship doing general office work for Habitat for Humanity. “The job helped me to believe in myself; it gave me confidence,” she says.
In the meantime, she flooded the market with her resumes, and finally, her persistence paid off. She was hired to do work that she feels particularly suited for -- helping chronically homeless women get back on their feet. “I love it,” she says with a wide smile.
“THRIVE -- well all of Multi-Service Center really -- has the philosophy of, ‘Let me help you to help yourself,’ and that’s what I needed,” Kelly said. “They were patient with me, supportive and encouraging.”
While Kelly worked with THRIVE, Multi-Service Center staff also helped her find housing through the agency’s Rapid Re-housing program. She soon found an apartment in Kent she could afford, where she lives currently. MSC’s Rapid Rehousing program offers subsidies for a limited time to give individuals time to reduce debt, build savings, and find steady employment so they can pay rent fully on their own.
Kelly knows the human services safety net helped her get where she is today.
“The system helped me – it gave me a hand up, and I’m grateful for it. But I didn’t want to stay on the system,” she says. “People do, I know. But I needed to take care of myself.”
Kelly now uses her experience and hard-won wisdom to help other women, both in her job and in AA, find their own confidence. Her journey since that hospital bed has been a long one, but Kelly is now on the road to creating a new history, this time about a strong woman building a stable future relying on her own strength.
Learn more about MSC's THRIVE program here.
Regained Her Dignity
At one point in her life, Vernalisa had a promising future with a full-ride scholarship to a university. But she threw it all away for an all-consuming addiction to methamphetamine, and by age 30, she had lost everything. Even friends and family had turned their backs on her. “I was miserable and dying inside,” she said of that time in her life. Her arrest probably saved her life. While awaiting trial, she checked herself into drug treatment and for the first time in her life, got clean and sober.
After release from prison, she turned to Multi-Service Center, finding refuge in the Titusville Program, transitional housing for women in recovery from addictions. There, Vernalisa received support and resources to overcome barriers that kept her from moving forward in her life. “Even when I had given up, there would be a knock on my door from someone [in MSC’s program] not giving up on me,” she said of her case managers.
Now, Vernalisa lives in her own apartment and is a fulltime student at Green River Community College. She gives back to the community through her work with a nonprofit agency that helps ex-offenders reconnect with society.
“Multi-Service Center helped me regain my dignity and has been the biggest blessing of my life,” she says.
Learn more about Multi-Service Center's Titusville Program here.
Ready for Success
Calvin stopped going to school in the middle of his sophomore year, not because school was too hard, but because there were always things he would rather be doing. “If my friends wanted to go to McDonalds for lunch and then not come back, that’s what I did,” he said. “I was smart, but I didn’t focus.”
His mother tried to help, enrolling him in a variety of programs, but nothing sparked his interest. Soon enough, Calvin ended up in trouble and on probation with the juvenile justice system. His probation officer referred him to Multi-Service Center’s Youth Services. At MSC, Calvin was partnered with a case manager and began to set goals for himself, one being to get his GED.
Within a short time he passed all five exams and earned his GED. His mother was delighted. “You helped him to see that he could be better than what he was doing,” she said. “You helped him expect to be successful and then prepare for that success.”
Once engaged, Calvin had dreams that included more than a GED. “After I passed, I thought, now I’m ready for the next successful thing,” he says with a wide grin. The “next thing” was an internship at a local retail store that hired him after his internship was completed. “Having a job is part of being in the real world,” he says. “It feels good to be a taxpayer.”
Calvin now has his sights set on going to college this fall, and his mother is filled with pride.
Learn more about Multi-Service Center's Youth Services Programs here.