Jenny entered Jobs for Life at Advance Memphis in March, 2010. By her own admission, her attitude was poor. After the six week program, Jenny had begun to trust her classmates and teachers, and to smile. She was hired and trained to embroider using a 6 head industrial embroidery machine at One Stop Marketing. When One Stop placed a machine in Advance’s Outsourcing Program, Jenny became the operator. Since then, she has worked consistently and participated in additional programs at Advance Memphis, deepening her leadership and problem solving skills, and earning forklift certification.
Today, Jenny has embroidered to the high standards of Autozone and Office Depot. She has co-workers for large jobs—one is her sister, who she inspired to enroll in Jobs for Life and is training on the machine. Jenny’s 12 year old daughter also joins her on holidays, helping to fold and sort shirts. Jenny has worked hard, and is becoming a leader in the community.
Jenny at her Jobs for Life graduation with her Champion (mentor) Marla Inman.
But that's only part of the story! This week, Jenny received a promotion. She is now our Outsourcing Team Lead, supervising all piece work that takes place in the Outsourcing Program of Advance. Our staff gathered this week to honor Jenny and congratulate her. We all shared how Jenny has blessed us by being at Advance, and then Jenny shared some of her story with us. Because the video is hard to hear, we've transcribed it here:
When I first came here, I was angry at myself, because of the trouble I had got into. I was kind of angry because I had left my kids behind [when she was incarcerated] because I love my kids SO much. And just being away from them a couple weeks made me want to call and check on them all the time -- so being away from them 6 months...that kind of hurt me and had me so much built up anger within myself. But being up here...yall taught me how to forgive myself, and that's the reason why I started smiling again. Cause I forgave myself and stopped beating myself up all the time from going to jail and leaving my kids behind.
Jenny accepts her Outsourcing Team Lead shirt from Employment Services Director, Juanita Johnson.
Jenny has truly earned this promotion over the last year. Please join us in praying that God will continue to bless Jenny and her children.
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