Richard and Kathleen Chaves know firsthand how giving people a hand up can change lives.

They’ve seen it happen as they’ve hired people previously living in poverty and paid them a living wage and benefits to work at their Chaves Consulting call center in Baker City.

The couple were among about 100 people from throughout the region who attended a Baker City training last week that required them to take a few steps in the shoes of people who walk daily in a life hampered by poverty.

Melinda Gross and Lori Beamer led the group gathered at Harvest Christian Church through a poverty simulation exercise in the morning. After lunch they led a workshop designed to bring awareness and understanding to the difficulties people face when they can’t afford to pay for basic needs such as food, housing and health care.

Gross is executive director of the Salem-based firm, CoActive Connections. Beamer is the agency’s director of operations and outreach. Together they offer trainings to nonprofit agencies and others around the state to help workers and community members better understand the complications poverty brings to people’s lives and how it impacts the community as well.

The Department of Human Services (DHS) has sponsored the poverty trainings around the state, including one in La Grande last week also.

As the May 5 meeting got under way, Marilyn Jones, District 13 manager for the DHS Self-Sufficiency and Child Welfare programs, told participants the focus of the Baker City training was a little different than others. It was aimed at workforce improvement.

That’s one of the reasons the Chaveses were there along with others representing economic development and education, such as Baker Technical Institute Director Jerry Peacock, Tammy Pierce, who serves as the career and technical education center’s program coordinator, and Griffen Judy, BTI welding and metal technology instructor.

“BTI is helping to educate people and to give them a chance to not be among the working poor and to make a living wage,” Jones told her audience.

Jones and her staff and agency partners will be getting hands-on experience this month to better understand what BTI is expecting of people referred to the welding program by DHS in a partnership between the state, the school and Behlen Manufacturing Co. Jones said she and at least 12 others have signed up to take one of Judy’s classes.

Richard Chaves praised the efforts of BTI to train people who already live in rural Oregon for jobs available in the region, such as welding.

He believes rural employers need to “seek out niches in industry that people in rural Oregon can accommodate.”

The 54 workers the Chaveses hired to fulfill a one-year contract with the Oregon Health Authority to take calls from Oregon Health Plan clients is another example of that kind of work, he said.

The Chaveses had hoped the one-year contract would be extended for five years.

The couple is working with state lawmakers and Gov. Kate Brown in the hope of getting the contract reinstated so they can rehire the employees who were laid off.

Chaves Consulting was able to rehire 20 of those people after receiving a new 90-day state contract that started on May 1 and will continue through June 30.

Richard said he and Kathleen found the poverty workshop to be a “remotivator for us for getting these jobs back and to look for other contracts.”

“It reinforces that we need industries in rural Oregon that can employ people already here looking for jobs,” he said. “BTI will help over time. Welding fits the job opportunities we have here.”

Likewise, call center jobs are a “broad-range fit” that can be performed by people in many different circumstances, he said.

Richard said a majority of the people who applied for the call-center jobs, who were first screened by WorkSource Oregon, were living at the federal poverty line or below ($24,600 per year for a family of four).

He recalls a single mother with two children and a dog who were all living in their car. Another couldn’t afford groceries and many couldn’t meet their basic needs.

He got a taste of some of the stress they must have felt in his portrayal of a 17-year-old drug-dealing dropout in a role assigned at random during the poverty simulation.

“You don’t realize the pressure people living at the poverty level are under to get help,” he said.

But still, the Chaveses were able to offer help by using strategies they’ve learned throughout their business careers and in the “Love and Logic” classes they attended to improve their parenting skills over the years. They coached and mentored their employees to change their lives as they became valuable workers.

“We saw a dramatic growth of self-confidence and pride as far as being self-sufficient and with faith that there are employers who want them,” Richard said of the workers hired for the Oregon Health Plan jobs. “We also learned that some grew a lot in social skills and teamwork and we hope they took that home.”

Richard said he and Kathleen work to impress upon employees the philosophy that change must start on the job and in their homes and move to the community, the state level and finally to Washington, D.C., rather than the other way around.

And the couple is putting their faith in Oregon lawmakers to remember promises made to help improve the economy of rural Oregon by helping them regain the lost Oregon Health Authority contract and others.

“We’re hoping the Legislature will be successful in incorporating things in the budget that get passed to put jobs in rural Oregon,” Richard said.

If he had his way, he would take all of the call centers in the state and move them out of urban areas and into rural Oregon. That would have a significant impact on the rural Oregon economy, he says. And, based on the work ethic of their employees and the Chaveses’ business management style, the state would see higher performance and save money on the contracts, Richard believes.

The couple have even offered to travel around rural Oregon to train other employers to use their business model of creating a safe environment of respect and trust to help workers thrive.

“We can make a good enough case that (the state) can’t ignore it,” Richard said.

The Chaveses said they don’t think their employees excelled because they are smarter than other workers across the state. Instead, they believe they were motivated because they were living in poverty.

“They were thrilled to have a job and they were thrilled to be self-sufficient,” Richard said. “They loved coming to work.”

The Chaveses thought the initial enthusiasm they saw from their new employees would wear off after the “honeymoon period” had ended, as it usually does, they said. Instead, the workers became even more enthused about the work they were doing.

“They never lost their fire,” Richard said.

As director of BTI, Peacock, who took the role of a payday loan officer during the poverty simulation, praised the Chaveses efforts to provide jobs and benefits for previously unemployed workers.

The longtime school administrator said he believed the poverty simulation and training was “a good start” for helping people begin to perceive the impact of poverty.

“I think we have to have a real serious understanding of what poverty is, especially with the changing demographics in this community,” he said.

See more in the May 12, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.