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Ex-addict shows convicts they can succeed
Speaking at a job-skills class in Reading, a former heroin user and
dealer tells how he turned himself around.
©2003 Reading
Eagle Company
By Merav Bushlin
Reading Eagle
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Reading Eagle:
Lisa Fernandez
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Robert Carmona, director of a job-skills agency, speaks to a
class Wednesday at Opportunity House, Schuylkill Avenue and
Buttonwood Street. |
Seeing Robert Carmona alone and in
front of a group is like watching two different men.
Talking privately, he converses like the Ivy-League-educated agency
president he has become.
To a class made up mostly of ex-convicts in Reading, Carmona, 52,
spoke from the heart.
“Once you're an alcohol or dope fiend, no matter how cute you look in
this suit I always in my heart know, I'm a dope fiend,” Carmona said.
“That never ever leaves, ever.”
Before Carmona helped establish STRIVE, an international job-readiness
program that teaches so-called unemployable people how to get and keep
a job, he was a drug addict who spent 10 years in and out of jail.
“I never had a job in my life up until the age of 24, 25,” Carmona
said. “I was scared, didn't have a resume, much less job skills or
anything like that.”
Carmona spoke to a JobQuest/STRIVE class Wednesday at Reading's
Opportunity House, formerly the Reading-Berks Emergency Shelter.
The program, established by Opportunity House in 2001, is based on a
model Carmona created in East Harlem, N.Y., in 1985. Similar programs
now operate in 20 cities nationwide and London.
Carmona's life turned around in 1976. After shooting heroin on the
street for years, he exchanged a five-year jail sentence for two years
in drug treatment and rehabilitation.
“I didn't go into the program to change,” he said, explaining that he
chose rehab only because he didn't want prison.
Some of his listeners, a group of about 20 men and one woman, agreed.
They didn't enter JobQuest/STRIVE to change, either. Many were there
under a judge's orders or the terms of their parole.
But some opened their minds to the possibility of a future, just as
Carmona did.
It wasn't easy to move forward, he said, explaining that there's a
security in the familiar, even in prison.
“For those of you all who have been locked up, let's face it, there's
some people more comfortable in the joint than on the street,” he
said.
What STRIVE teaches that other programs do not, Carmona said, is the
soft skills that are key to finding employment skills ex-offenders
probably lack.
For example, what he called a game face the inscrutable expression of
men on the streets or in jail could frighten away an interviewer,
Carmona said.
But getting a potential boss to genuinely like you might overcome even
a criminal record, he said.
“He brought it right home,” said Kevin Thomas Heck, a recent JobQuest/STRIVE
graduate who was released from prison two months ago and resides in
Reading. “He even has that lingo. And he made a lot of sense.”
Seeing both sides of Carmona the ex-convict/drug addict and the
prosperous, married father of two grown daughters impressed the Job
Quest/STRIVE students.
“Rob, he came from the ghetto,” said one student, Eric Garcia. “And
today he has a successful career. If a man like him can come from that
kind of status and have this kind of career that shocked me.”
But it was no shock to Job Quest/STRIVE administrators.
In Reading, 184 people have graduated from the program in the past two
years. About one-third of them are working.
Garcia said he wants to apply himself and find a job, and he's
starting to believe that he can.
Contact reporter Merav Bushlin at
610-371-5014 or
mbushlin@readingeagle.com.
Past Articles
Center opens for abuse victims
Donors
leave hungry at city charity event
Ex-addict shows convicts they can succeed
Center aims to ease ordeal for children in sex-abuse
cases
Feb 22, 2004 - PDF version
The hidden homeless
Feb 8, 2004 - PDF version
Group hopes to find
good use for a former city trouble spot
Jan 20, 2004 - PDF version
Eagles kicker, announcer swoop into celebration
Dec 24, 2003 - PDF version
Inside
Opportunity House
December 5, 2003 - PDF version
Woman, son find a
new life at Opportunity House
October 28, 2003 - PDF version
Facility changes name to reflect its mission
7/21/03
Opportunity House is located in Reading, Pennsylvania and serves residents of Berks County. Our goal is to help families and adults become and remain independent members of our community.
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