Journey Home is committed to ending chronic homelessness in Greater Hartford, as part of the Zero: 2016 Campaign. taking a systems approach that simultaneously addresses housing, employment and support services.

Encore!Hartford participant Roy Mainelli, a retired MBA mechanical engineer with 33 years of strategic planning and organizational management experience in the aerospace industry, completed an Encore Fellowship with Journey Home in 2013, conducting a survey of clients’ barriers to employment.

Recognizing his talent, connections and passion for their work, Journey Home hired Roy to work on a veterans’ employment program. Roy built on his aerospace industry relationships to develop a social enterprise concept that provides living wage jobs and a revenue stream to Journey Home.

Ray commented, “the MC at my retirement party is the president of a major Connecticut company. I called him and said ‘If I bring you candidates that are low to mid skill and get them educated, will you hire them?‘ and he said yes. So, the person knows when they go through our program they’re going to get a job at the end.”

ED Matt Morgan commented, “We’re a very, very small non-profit, and any additional kind of manpower, woman power that we can get, I’m eager to pursue those kinds of opportunities. It was exciting to me to have someone from the business sector join the team. Roy brought knowledge expertise, and relationships from his career that we’ve used to help homeless people in greater Hartford.… he was way more qualified than most of the candidates who would’ve applied for his role.”

“Roy is also incredibly creative and an entrepreneur – that’s another reason he’s perfect for this the aerospace employment placement program.”

“This program that Roy has started has been incredible in offering living wage jobs with health care benefits. People with no income, no job, are able to go into this program, and after a semester at Goodman College, they are eligible for this new career path. It’s very exciting to help them to leave poverty and homelessness behind forever.”

“It’s really a great model and he did it all—his Excel charts with revenues, funding streams and matching grants. All of that stuff, he brought. I didn’t have to train him in any of that kind of thing.”

“Roy’s age brought diversity to our organization. Many of us are young, and I think people from all different backgrounds, different age groups, different ethnicities can really enrich the work especially when we’re talking about the diverse homeless population.”

“An intergenerational workplace offers lots of benefits. It’s great to have for somebody that has the long view, which can balance out the naïveté, or the energy of young people.”

Ray is energized by the work, noting “Journey Home is a small organization, with five employees all trained in social work. I’m not. They bring the warmer side to this process and the people part. I bring the business side. I respect that they know what these people have gone through and how best to deal with them.”

“And they look at me as I’ve been around, I can help them, you know, raising money, organization structure, how best to, you know, handle some political situations. It’s been fun working with young people.”