The mission of the REACH Higher Program is to create opportunities for participants to enhance personal abilities, assist with overcoming barriers to self-sufficiency, move successfully into the workforce, and retain employment, ultimately removing the participants from welfare.

How it works?
This program provides welfare recipients with six month of job skills training in an effort to permanently remove them from public support programs. Funded through a grant from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, REACH Higher participants work 32 hours per week at minimum wage in lieu of TANF, at no cost to the community partner. They also attend a weekly 8-hour job and life-skills training course during the six month tenure of the program. Upon graduation from the program, the successful participant will have earned a full-time job and overcome obstacles relating to employment including transportation, education, and childcare issues.

SUCCESS STORY

Angela Bryant is a single mother of three boys. She came to the Housing Authority of Bowling Green seeking help in order to get off the welfare and provide a better living situation for her and her three children. She participated with various programs including REACH Higher.

Upon graduation from the program, Angela was hired and presently employed by the Girl's Club in Bowling Green, now called the Boy's and Girl's Club. Not only did Angela succeed in the working environment but also in raising her three boys.

Her oldest son received an academic scholarship at the University of Louisville in 2007; another will attend University of Tennessee at Martin in Fall 2009 on a Football Scholarship; and one will be a senior at Bowling Green High School. Recently we met with Angela Bryant and asked her how the Housing Authority of Bowling Green has helped her. She replied "They helped me become a more independent person to be able to stand on my own two feet."