A downtown Scranton church will start its workplace training program for formerly incarcerated people in January.<\/p>\n
Board member Ken Goody hopes Cypress House Bakery at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church will facilitate a network of support for some of Northeast Pennsylvania\u2019s most vulnerable residents.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Isabela Weiss | WVIA News | Report for America<\/p>\n
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Above the glass door, lettering reads “St. Luke’s Parish House”.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are affirming their dignity and their \u2018worthwhileness.\u2019 I mean, these folks coming out of prison \u2026 they’ve paid their debt to society,\u201d Goody said during a Wednesday interview at St. Luke\u2019s Episcopal Church in Scranton.<\/p>\n
He said St. Luke\u2019s program, which has been 10 years in the making, aims to build up former inmates\u2019 sense of self-worth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to them learning how to bake and manage a kitchen, we’re hoping to provide a real, constructive part of their personal recovery journey,\u201d Goody said.<\/p>\n
St. Luke\u2019s will host an open house on Friday, Dec. 5 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. for the community to tour the church\u2019s newly renovated kitchen and meet criminal justice experts from around the region.<\/p>\n
Goody added the open house coincides with First Friday in Scranton, and the church will have snacks and hot coffee for anyone braving the cold.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania and U.S. leads in worldwide incarceration rates<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania has the 28th highest incarceration rate in the nation<\/a> \u2014 just slightly behind the country\u2019s national average \u2014 and Lackawanna County has the 23rd highest incarceration rate<\/a> in the state, according to 2020-24 data from the Prison Policy Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not new information that the U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and the highest among founding NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n Goody and other Cypress board members say their organization will connect program members to a \u201ccommunity of support.\u201d Alejandra Marroquin, a board member and social worker with the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, said St. Luke\u2019s will create a kind of referral service.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the individuals (formerly incarcerated people) sometimes have difficult backgrounds, so we want to be a support for them,\u201d Marroquin said.<\/p>\n \n 1 of 2 Here is what the kitchen at Cypress House Bakery looked like before the renovation. It will be used to teach formerly incarcerated people baking and culinary skills.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Brian Goble<\/p>\n \n 2 of 2 Brian Goble, operations manager at Cypress House Bakery, shows off new equipment in the renovated kitchen. <\/p>\n Isabela Weiss | WVIA News | Report for America<\/p>\n St. Luke\u2019s, in Downtown Scranton, making it an easy location for participants to get to medical appointments, meetings with parole officers or addiction services, and other needs.<\/p>\n Marroquin said the job training program will focus on helping its participants obtain a PA Certificate in Food Handling alongside supporting their mental and physical health.<\/p>\n \u201c[We] give time for that person to go to that appointment \u2026 [unlike] regular employment \u2026 This will give space for that to happen,\u201d Marroquin said.<\/p>\n How will the baking program work?<\/p>\n Unlike other job training programs, participants will be paid a \u201cliving wage\u201d during their enrollment in the 6-month program. The exact wage could not be confirmed, but board members said it would be around $20 to $22 per hour. Participants will take classes at St. Luke\u2019s four or five times a week and will live in the Northeast Pennsylvania area.<\/p>\n St. Luke\u2019s plans to offer the program twice a year with eight attendees, four in the mornings for classes and four in the evening. The board said it is in the final stages of selecting a baking instructor to run the program and design a curriculum.<\/p>\n Participants will be chosen based on baking and culinary interest.<\/p>\n After training classes begin in January the board hopes to expand its services in the future and possibly add a store or coffee shop where students can sell their baked goods.<\/p>\n St. Luke\u2019s Priest-in-Charge and Cypress\u2019 President and CEO Reverend Tyler Parry said the church will primarily work with Mary Brotzman, a community reentry parole agent who runs the state\u2019s STRIVE program to connect people who would be a good fit.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as we’re ready to go, she (Brotzman) has folks who are in need that she’s ready to send our way. [These people want to] be prepared for the employment that they need, but [they] just can’t quite get it (steady employment) now because of some things that are holding them back and some skills that they haven’t developed yet,\u201d Parry said.<\/p>\n STRIVE, the State Transition Reentry Incentive Validating Endeavors program, is modeled after the federal Court-Assisted Re-Entry program, CARE. Both help formerly incarcerated people who are at-risk of reincarceration adapt to life outside of prison.<\/p>\n For more information on CARE, check out the 2021 WVIA Documentary, A Call to CARE<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n 1 of 3 St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Scranton.<\/p>\n Isabela Weiss | WVIA News | Report for America<\/p>\n \n 2 of 3 St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places<\/p>\n Isabela Weiss | WVIA News | Report for America<\/p>\n \n 3 of 3 An old photo of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church nearby the present-day church in Scranton.<\/p>\n Isabela Weiss | WVIA News | Report for America<\/p>\n Cypress House board member Thomas Vanaskie was one of the first people to start the STRIVE program. He is a former United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and former judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Vanaskie joined Cypress under its former Priest-in-Charge, Reverend Rebecca Barnes, who wanted to connect Pennsylvania\u2019s criminal justice system to a greater network of rehabilitation and re-entry services.<\/p>\n \u201c[We want to provide] a continuum of care. It doesn’t end when you sign your papers and you’re no longer on parole \u2026 We want to have that support network in place afterwards,\u201d Vanaskie said.<\/p>\n National impact: Cypress House Bakery and Homeboy Industries<\/p>\n Cypress House is affiliated with Los Angeles-based Homeboy Industries <\/a>and is part of its Global Homeboy Network<\/a>, which features partners in several U.S. states and internationally.<\/p>\n Homeboy Industries is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. Its founder, Father Gregory Boyle, promotes \u201cradical kinship\u201d among its community members and provides an 18-month employment and re-entry program. Participants can also access tattoo removal and substance abuse resources to education services.<\/p>\n Mike Jenkins, a Cypress board member and criminal justice professor at the University of Scranton, said Homeboy Industries and Cypress provides people who are at-risk of reincarceration or are involved in gangs a place where they can feel \u201csafe\u201d and is often the first place where they are seen as individuals.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoever comes through the doors, we see them, and we see the goodness and godliness in them. And that changes the way that they interact [with themselves and other people,]\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201c[When people feel safe] those walls come down and they see the humanity in each other as well,\u201d Jenkins said.<\/p>\n Parry emphasized that people do not need to be Episcopalian or Christian to enroll at Cypress House Bakery. He said he does ask that everyone respect St. Luke\u2019s model of kinship.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look at people and say, you belong and I belong,\u201d Parry said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A downtown Scranton church will start its workplace training program for formerly incarcerated people in January. Board member…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-52487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0cypresshouse Before renovation\n <\/p>\n
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0cypresshouse2_120425\n <\/p>\n
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0st. lukes episcopal church\n <\/p>\n
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0IMG_1393.JPG\n <\/p>\n
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0st lukes episcopal church 2\n <\/p>\n