SOAR Career Solutions was known as Project SOAR of Northeastern Minnesota from its inception in 1980 until April 2006. During those years, the organization specialized in helping individuals with multiple barriers to employment success.
Approximately 300 low-to-moderate-income clients have utilized our subsidized services each year for many years. The vast majority of those clients have low, very low, or no incomes. We have typically served a high percentage of minorities, assisting them to achieve personal and employment success. Our services are utilized by both men and women, single and married clients, parents and those without children.
Client Outcomes:
In 2006-2007 SOAR collected employment and education data on 247 clients.
Of those:
- 81% (200) were unemployed on intake date.
- 64% (30) of the 47 employed at intake retained the jobs they had
- 23% (58) secured full time employment,
- 13% (31) secured part time employment
- 48% (119) secured or maintained employment at an average wage of $9.27/hour.
- 6% (14) enrolled in education, added to employed this totals 54%
- 33% (81) were still actively seeking employment, added to employed and enrolled in education this totals 87%.
We provide vital community services that are NOT found anywhere else in the community. In our subsidized programs, our goals are to help each individual develop a sustainable career path given their particular skills, knowledge, interests, experience, and abilities. We offer proven long-term services and a personalized, whole-person approach.
What we see is nothing short of transformed lives! Clients come to us discouraged and without hope. They leave with a plan for personal and economic success and the confidence to pursue that plan. We help people determine their own futures, identify their dreams, and set and reach attainable goals.
Our subsidized services include the “soft skills” training employers say is missing when they hire people: the work ethic combination of attitude, motivation, presentation, and enthusiasm that differentiates the strong, promotable employee from the mediocre employee. Many organizations identify this as the missing piece in their services. We offer those organizations the ability to increase their success rate by integrating our career development workshops into their programs.
Several community partners request and refer to our community services. We actively seek referrals and partnerships with human service providers who are working with people in poverty or low-moderate incomes. Our goal is to weave into their programming an employment and training component that will complement their other services such as housing assistance, crisis intervention, or occupational training.
Our programs help to create a stronger, more reliable, more diverse workforce in the region. This meets the community’s need for dependable workers who are well-suited to their positions and eager to retain their employment or to advance. Our curriculum guides people to identify their chosen fields of interest, coaches them to strive to be the best candidate for the job, and enforces the need to understand how and why employers hire, promote, and fire people.
We work in a social and economic environment that too often blames people raised in poverty for being poor, advocates “rapid attachment to the workforce” without providing the means for people to earn a living wage job, and generates an inadequate number of living wage jobs within the community. The community’s response is often the “charity model,” providing emergency food, shelter, clothing and—to some degree—medical care for low-income people, giving them just enough to survive without giving them the means to break the cycle of poverty. This “charity model” is expensive to the community, does nothing to strengthen its social fabric, and does not value or respect the potential and ability of its low-income members. Our approach, which focuses on the whole person and the whole employment process, includes extensive follow-up. We highlight the strength inherent in each person and use that strength to assist each one to realize their potential.
We believe the best social program is a job!
Soar Career Solutions · 205 West 2nd Street · Suite 101 · Duluth, MN 55802
Phone: (218) 722-3126 · Fax: (218) 722-4617 · Email: info@soarcareers.org
This website was made possible through a grant from the Duluth/Superior Area Community Foundation.
We are grateful for their support!