Purpose Prize

Marc Freedman Portrait

The Latest from CoGenerate

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

For the past year, Ampact, with support from CoGenerate’s Generations Serving Together program, placed cogenerational pairs of AmeriCorps members in elementary schools. The older and younger adults worked side by side to improve students’ reading and math skills. A...

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

We at CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) are mourning the loss of Chuck Feeney this week. Without Chuck's vision and generosity we likely would not exist as an organization. Twenty-five years ago Atlantic Philanthropies took a chance on our start-up, playing a...

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Jackie Savage

The Work Central Career Advancement Center
Purpose Prize Fellow 2008

Helping the working poor achieve self-sufficiency in the face of the loss of traditional industries

As a consultant to North Carolina’s Work First Business Council, a group of the largest employers in the state, Jackie Savage was assigned to help businesses hire former welfare customers. She saw firsthand how poverty and unemployment wreak havoc on North Carolina families. In 2000, Savage secured state funds to support innovative ways to prevent the working poor from falling through the cracks, creating the Work Central Career Advancement Center. By 2002, Work Central had become the central program of CONNECTINC, a non-profit telecommunication center. The organization, an innovative hybrid of traditional case management and communications technology, provides assistance in the area of career advancement, job retention, asset accumulation and reemployment. New case management software was developed by the organization to make customer service more efficient without sacrificing individual attention. The Departments of Health and Human Services in five North Carolina counties have taken notice and started using the software for their own clients. Connectinc’s Work Central program has helped more than 5,000 people find jobs in the past five years. The job retention rate: an impressive 86 percent. Connectinc programs have helped more than 1,000 dislocated workers find new jobs. Teach Central has assisted more than 300 new teachers with teaching ideas and ways to handle discipline with students, and helped more than 3,000 families find and secure tax assistance. Another program, Health Central, assists qualifying customers to obtain free prescription medications. Savage serves as President and leads Connectinc in their holistic focus on the customer. Staff members will make follow-up calls to customers to see what they can do to help, because a sick child, problems at school – or anything that happens in the family that pulls a person away from work and income – is a job retention issue.