Roca Inc

Work projects - through the transitional employment program (tep), participants learn critical work skills needed to become sustainably-employed, economically independent adults. The goal of the transitional employment program is to teach participants about work by having them work. Many of our young people have never had a job and do not know how to show up to work every day or what it means to behave appropriately at work. Roca utilizes subsidized employment to give young people their first exposure to the daily requirements of employment. Our goal is to ensure that, after completing the program, they are prepared for an entry-level position in the open labor market. Low self-esteem serves as another barrier blocking participants from leading healthy and productive lives. By teaching participants how to work they build confidence in their individual skills and abilities. Roca operates supervised work crews that engage in partially-subsidized work projects contracted through municipal public works departments and private companies. The work crews have two major benefits: 1) they teach participants how to work and 2) they benefit the communities they serve by helping to clean up streets and local parks, while improving public safety by keeping them off of the streets. After succeeding in tep, young people meet with roca's career counselor and are placed at one of roca's partnering employers to provide unsubsidized job opportunities.young people participate in these work crews 4 days/week, 6.5 hours/day. On the day young people are not working, they are at roca for life skills, alternative education, and pre-vocational training programs. Tep helps young people practice showing up each day while giving them the opportunity to make mistakes. In this program, failure is inevitable and expected. It takes our young people 15-18 months to complete 60 consecutive work days.

Capacity building - roca's capacity building initiatives are designed to aid the organization as it grows and moves towards goals and objectives outlined in its strategic plan. Capacity building activities include research and evaluation; refinement of the roca intervention model; development and refinement of rocas performance based management system; leadership and staff development and planning for program replication.