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JONI B. HANNIGAN
Managing Editor
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| GIFTS Janet Kimmell (right) CWJC director, hands a gift to Brandi Uber at a March 27 graduation luncheon. Uber completed the program within a few days of giving birth to a daughter pictured with several of her family members. Photo by Joni B. Hannigan |
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| Click on image for related coverage |
JACKSONVILLE (FBW)—Janet Kimmell remembers the young woman vividly. She had come to the Christian Women’s Job Corps with little more than a basic education and a baby.
The basic education was something the Job Corps could help build on to assist the woman—who had literally been cast out on the side of the road by her boyfriend—to prepare for a job. The baby was another story.
“We didn’t have child care, but decided to let four of five women with young children form a class,” Kimmell said. “It was a total disaster. We never tried it again.”
Now director of the Christian Women’s Job Corps for the Jacksonville Baptist Association, Kimmell told Florida Baptist Witness, the experience was nonetheless the one that comes to mind when she thinks about how God has used her to lead the ministry.
At a graduation ceremony following an intensive four-week session, the young woman stood up, Kimmell recalled, and told the others that before going to CWJC she was just “an unwed mother with a young child who thought she would have to be at a dead end job.”
“Now I know I can do whatever I want to do,” Kimmel remembered the young woman saying.
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| GRADUATE CWJC director, Janet Kimmell (right), shares a laugh with a recent graduate of the Jacksonvile CWJC Tammie Gentry March 27. Photo by Joni B. Hannigan |
“Wow,” Kimmell said. “I had no idea that’s how she felt. But that’s what we teach, that she is loved by God and that God will take her somewhere.”
Christian Women’s Job Corps (CWJC) is a ministry of women helping women in need, in a Christian context, to be equipped for life in employment, Kimmell said. It is a national program founded by the Woman’s Missionary Union, an auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention, and adapted on the local level.
Kimmell, who has been at Highlands Baptist Church in Jacksonville since she was four, acknowledged her ideas of what to expect of the ministry have changed since she began working with CWJC in 2006.
Raised in a home where her mom was a Christian and took her to church, Kimmell was 12-years-old when she was “convicted” and made Jesus the “personal Lord” of her life.
Disillusioned over racial tensions in the culture and in the church during high school, Kimmell said she drew away from God, but after marrying her husband Mike and having children, she realized “the awesome task of raising kids outside of the church” and went back.
Working at a bank part-time and then full-time as her children grew, Kimmell said she had to face some tough decisions when her own job came to an end after 27 years in 2005.
“I knew God had a plan for my life, but it’s easier to trust him when I had a paycheck coming in,” said Kimmell, who is now a grandmother of three.
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| Brandi Uber smiles holding her newborn, while an older daughter enjoys the ceremony. Photo by Joni B. Hannigan |
That’s when the former CWJC director for the Jacksonville Baptist Association stepped in and asked Kimmell for help. CWJC was meeting at Highlands anyway and after a few false starts, in 2006, Kimmell finally became site director at the CWJC which now meets at Home Inc., a building which houses a number of inner-city ministries and community agencies in downtown Jacksonville.
As the ministry director, Kimmell oversees the program which meets four mornings a week for five four-week sessions a year. About a dozen instructors teach women anything from resume building to computer skills classes.
“Each person when they leave, they have a resume, an outfit for an interview and all the skills they need to go out and get a job,” Kimmell said.
Bible study is incorporated into the daily routine and is encouraged after the women graduate as part of the mentoring component of the program.
Kimmell’s part-time pay and limited resources for the program are paid through the association and some churches and individuals also contribute to the ministry’s shoestring budget. Kimmell estimates it costs about $500 per women to provide the resources needed for a women to complete the program.
Included in those resources may even be bus tokens so women can travel to meeting location..
Giving women an “I can do it attitude” they haven’t had before is every bit as important as the skills and head knowledge they pick up in classes, Kimmell said.
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| FOUNDERS Vanita Baldwin (left) a members of CWJC’s advisory council, with Frances Shaw. Photo by Joni B. Hannigan |
Accepting about 20 individuals into the program each year already makes for small classes and when considering only about 12 of those women actually “graduate,” Kimmell said she’s had to reevaluate the way she measures success.
If success is measured by a steady number of graduates, people who are easy to keep in contact with and those who get jobs—then she would probably be discouraged.
“People who are deeper in poverty have a hard time in the continuity of life in all of the areas,” Kimmell said. “I wasn’t prepared for that when I started this ministry.
“A lot of our women do go out and change their lives and I don’t count the ones who do not as not successful,” she continued. “Sometimes they just take a new direction. We just consider that success.”
Loving people, not serving out of expectations is key, said Kimmell, who also serves as church secretary at Highlands Baptist Church.
“Really God had to change my heart about things,” Kimmell said. “Their excuses weren’t what I would call legitimate, but God showed me the life they live and the lifestyle, and if we can bring them a little bit closer to being committed, that’s important. It shows that God is still at work in people’s lives.”
For more information on CWJC in Jacksonville, please call Janet Kimmell at 904-616-7548 or Jacksonville Baptist Association at 904-727-6800. Witness’ Managing editor Joni B. Hannigan is a volunteer with Jacksonville’s CWJC.
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