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From left: Adolfo Jimenez, Carol Steel, E. Scott Williams, Y'Kirshia Davis, Jerome Sloan, Soad Abdi, Yolanda Gonzalez. (Photo/Multnomah County/Motoya Nakamura)
Saundra Sorenson
Published: 17 January 2025

The Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC) provides workplace training geared toward local BIPOC students, serving more than 3,000 pupils, trainees and families across the Portland Metro area. On Tuesday, POIC celebrated receiving funding from the state and federal government at the Community Cares Office in downtown Portland.

“This location represents a lot for us at this time in our history, as we are developing a certification for outreach workers,” Joe McFerrin, president and CEO of POIC, said. “We believe that outreach workers, credible messengers and peer-to-peer professionals are vital keys to safe communities. The problem is, we haven’t invested enough in these people. We have a number of our folks here who do this work each and every day. They’re committed. They’re passionate. They have the experience and the credibility, and this should be a career pathway. And their skills and experience should be valued. So this building right here will represent a place where we'll cultivate that training.”

In the past four years, POIC has expanded its data-driven violence-intervention approach to provide culturally specific support to victims of gun crime. POIC partnerships with OHSU, TriMet, the Portland Metro Chamber, Portland State University and Gov. Tina Kotek’s Central City Task Force have been instrumental in decreasing fatal and non-fatal shooting incidents, which the Portland Police Bureau reports have decreased by 34% in the past year.

In 2021, POIC partnered with the Multnomah County Behavioral Health Division’s Gun Violence Impacted Families Behavioral Health Response Team to bring trauma-informed therapy and services to gun-impacted populations, specifically within communities of color, at a time when Portland's gun homicide rate was on the rise in keeping with national trends.

$1.9 Million For Community Safety Worker Training

The Federal Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance recently awarded $1.9 million to POIC to expand the Innovative Career Certification for its Community Safety Worker program, which launched last June in partnership with PSU. The first group of 22 graduates have completed the 200-hour apprenticeship-style course that equips trauma-informed counselors with lived experience with advanced training. The program recognizes that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution and should be offered a path to turn what is often a minimum-wage position into full-time, viable career.

Ame Lambert, vice president of Global Diversity and Inclusion at PSU, oversaw the curriculum development for the first class of Community Safety Worker students.

“One of the most important things we did was get to know the students in the first cohort,” Lambert said. “We heard stories of pain, resilience, triumph, accountability and determination.

We discovered that our students were really brilliant, passionate, insightful, invested and driven. But many of them had been under-served by our systems and our institutions, and didn’t have anyone looking out for them as they were coming up. Some of them were also robbed of the opportunity to develop an identity as a student, as a good student. So understandably there was a lot of apprehension at the beginning of another educational experience for them, and we invested time during those first months working through that, and everything that we learned we have applied to our curriculum and development.”

Through this funding, POIC has been able to partner with OHSU, one of the state’s two Level 1 trauma centers, to further research and training opportunities.

POIC programs include Healing Hurt People, a violence intervention program that sends trained staff to hospitals to support victims and to address their physical, emotional and social needs after hospital discharge. Often, this means intervening in plans the victim may have for retaliation.

“I’ve seen the difference from going into the hospitals in the midst of someone suffering from gun violence or community violence, or catching up and following up with them later after they got out of the hospital, and they’re kind of lax now, and it’s not as fresh on their minds now and their friends are around now, and now they’re second-guessing about joining the program,” HHP staff member Mark said. “We’re able to intervene and stop retaliatory violence, we’re able to be that voice of reason. We have something called ‘play the tape out.’ What that means is, think this through – what will happen if you go out and retaliate? What will happen to your kids, to your family when you get caught? It’s really just trying to have them critically think about the future.”

This training uses the Healing Hurt People model established at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

“OHSU has been partnering with POIC on violence prevention for several years, work that’s incredibly meaningful to our patients and our staff,” Steve Stadum, OHSU interim president, said at the office opening, calling the Healing Hurt People program at OHSU “extremely innovative” and crediting it with saving lives “by reducing retaliatory violence.”

$1 Million in State Funding for Downtown Relocation for Peer-to-Peer Program

The POIC community safety office opened in the heart of downtown Portland at 601 SW Oak St. last fall to bring life-saving services to a particularly at-risk area of the city. The office was supported by $1 million in state funding earmarked by Gov. Kotek’s Central City Task Force for peer-delivered services, and will enable POIC to work with the Provider-Police Joint Connection to connect individuals to services like detox, medical care and resources to meet basic needs.

“Why downtown? Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution,” McFerrin said. “We believe that a thriving downtown Portland will help POIC reach its mission of helping people achieve future success. We have a long history of meeting people where they are, and we’re going to bring that to downtown.”

POIC has also partnered with TriMet to assign uniformed POIC staff to conduct outreach around key, high-risk areas of the TriMet MAX light rail system and bus lines near McDaniel, Parkrose, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Franklin high schools. Staff’s presence deters criminal activity during peak times of student commutes and helps ensure safety to vulnerable individuals as they travel home.

POIC was founded in 1967 as a local chapter of the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America to provide education, training and job placement services to marginalized members of the Portland community. In 1983, POIC added an alternative high school, now called Rosemary Anderson Prep in honor of its founding executive director.

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