What is the Hand Up Cooperative?
Hand Up Cooperative is a Cooperative effort of the United Way of Larimer County, The Murphy Center of Hope, and the business community of Fort Collins.The mission of Hand Up is to match area businesses that have employment opportunities with pre-screened applicants from the homeless community that need a job and ultimately to help them to get the "Hand Up" they need to permanently get off the streets.
How did Hand Up get started?
Hand Up started with the successful match of a person in need and a business and manager that were willing to take a chance to make a different in our community. The person in need was John Cordova, a long time member of the homeless community. The manager was Andy Troccoli and the business was New Belgium Brewing. Their story is both inspirational and a working example of how this program can work given the right combination of compassion, opportunity, structure, patience and commitment.Sister Mary Alice Murphy, a long time advocate for the homeless, immediately recognized the potential of making similar matches between the homeless community and businesses with job opportunities after learning about John, Andy, and New Belgium's story. And the rest as they say is "history."
Why is Hand Up different from other job matching programs?
- Hand Up asks the business to provide both a job opportunity and a mentor (someone within the organization) to work with the new employee to guide them through the intricacies of adapting to the workplace and adjusting to a new routine.
- Hand Up provides ongoing training/counseling to both the mentor and the new employee
Benefits to the Business
- Pre-screened job applicants
- A source of "super motivated" job applicants
- Tax Benefits
- A support team to work with the job mentor and the new employee
- Community Philanthropy combined with the routine task of filling job opportunities
- Provides mentors with skills and training that might prove useful in other areas of the company