Hope Is a Weapon

One principle unites this array of offerings: Students choose to enroll in each program, and once they do, they are held to nonnegotiable performance standards. "That's why we have it over the high schools," says Thomas Murphy, 61, who manages Fast Track and First Step. "Most of these people have been out of school for a couple of years, and they know what it's like out there. They want to improve, to get a career for themselves." First Step and Fast Track boast a retention rate 0f 75%. The 25% who drop out are casualties of a set of strict rules that Focus:Hope makes no apologies about enforcing. Drug testing takes place at the discretion of instructors; neither tardiness nor unexplained absences are tolerated; and lowering standards for individual students is prohibited.

"We're not in the rehabilitation business," Josaitis says. "We're in the business of giving people opportunities. It's up to them to accept each opportunity, take it, and run with it. We have a saying here: 'No missionaries.' A missionary will say, 'Honey, I understand that the bus didn't come today, or the dog bit the cat' -- or accept some other excuse. But when companies don't hire students because they don't have the right work ethic, what good have we done?"

No one questions April Hunter's work ethic. Hunter, 33, who has completed both First Step and Fast Track, is the mother of an 11-year-old, a set of 3-year-old twins, and a 1-year-old. She hopes that the math and technical skills that she's acquired at Focus:Hope will one day help her become a computer programmer. But she has acquired other skills as well. "The most valuable thing I've learned is how to interact with people on a professional level," she says. "Our communications class has speaking sessions in which we read articles aloud or discuss them. A classmate can say to one of us, 'Maybe you shouldn't say this word that way.' We also have free-for-all discussions in which we debate issues. The objective is to learn to consider other people's opinions and to avoid conflict. A lot of people are shy -- they don't like to stand up and speak -- and this exercise helps them."

For Hunter, being in the classroom is easy -- getting there is what's hard. After waking up at 5 a.m., Hunter dresses her four children, sends her 11-year-old to school, and -- with her infant and the twins still in tow -- boards the first of three buses that bring her to Focus:Hope. Such dedication, although extraordinary, is not all that unusual, says Murphy. A former command sergeant major who still speaks in the brogue of his native Ireland, Murphy tells the story of another student whose commitment seemed shaky -- at first: "A young man had started class on Monday, and on Tuesday morning, he came to me at 5:45 and asked, 'Mr. Murphy, is there someplace I can take a nap?' That's the wrong thing to say to me at that hour of the morning. Well, it turned out that he had left here the evening before at 4 p.m., gone home, slept for three hours, gone to his factory job, worked until 5:30 a.m., and then come here. He did that for seven weeks, without missing a beat."

Focus: Hope has come under attack for its unforgiving standards. But Josaitis argues that by setting high expectations, the program not only challenges people to reach their potential but also respects their dignity. And dignity is a major theme of the Focus:Hope experience. For example, the group has set up its food bank to resemble a grocery store so that children don't feel as if they're getting handouts. And all of the students in the training center wear identical industrial smocks. "It gives you a businesslike feeling," says Hunter. "You know how you see doctors and nurses wearing lab coats? Well, in the same way, that smock makes you feel that you're someone important."

Hope Has a Price

By any measure, Focus:Hope is a dazzling success. but the path forward has involved some major detours. Some of the battles have been waged in public -- such as Focus:Hope's 13-year lawsuit against the American Automobile Association (AAA) for racial and sexual discrimination. "A lot of people said, 'Shame on you,' and withdrew their support," Josaitis says. "But we felt it was the right thing to do, and we won the case in federal court. Trying to change a society is not always easy." AAA has since become a staunch supporter of Focus:Hope, and today it contributes both volunteers and money.

Other battles have been more private. When Josaitis and Father Cunningham founded Focus:Hope, Josaitis's brother-in-law, appalled by her high-profile commitment to racial integration, asked her to use her maiden name, so that she wouldn't embarrass his family. And when Josaitis moved her family into an integrated neighborhood, her mother, concerned for safety of Josaitis's children, hired a lawyer to try to get custody of them. Both family members eventually came around -- "Now my brother-in-law thinks I'm cool," Josaitis laughs -- but there's no denying that the early years of Focus:Hope were fraught with pain. "Perseverance is the greatest skill that you can have," Josaitis says.