Safe Havens is expanding into welfare-to-work
By Allan Lopez WALNUT CREEK JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Pittsburg resident Betty Jaramillo wraps a gift basket at a Concord facility. The gift baskets are being sold to fund Safe Havens for Little People, a welfare-to-work program envisioned by Walnut Creek resident Karen Justice-Guard.

In a nondescript building just off Clayton road in Concord lies a factory where people are working to make pink, aromatic candles from scratch. The candles are collected with some other gifts--chocolate, bath oils and spaghetti sauce, to name a few--which are then put into a metal basket and wrapped with cellophane.

It sounds like a nice holiday gift. That's what Karen Justice-Guard thinks, at least. And she's hoping others will feel the same, because while she wants to turn a profit from the baskets, she said getting them sold is accomplishing much more.

The Walnut Creek resident is trying to get a complete welfare-to-work vision off the ground, parts of which are now in their infancy.

Part of Justice-Guard's vision is being realized with the baskets. Women are learning to create, market and distribute the baskets, and in the process they're learning skills that Justice-Guard hopes will help them get off welfare.

Justice-Guard was on welfare herself and is quick to mention other obstacles she's faced. She lived a "fast" life, used drugs, was abused by her husband, and lost her father to cancer two and a half years ago.

But it was that loss that also triggered a birth. She took her inheritance money and began the Safe Havens for Little People program."I was looking for a safe place for women and children to be able to recover," she said, and explained that she started the program shortly after she walked away from a bad relationship and cleaned herself up at a Lake Tahoe drug rehabilitation program.

Justice-Guard took the program as a nonprofit organization. Along with that came the Safe Haven line of bottled water and gourmet sauces, plus The Source, a brand of aromatherapy products that includes candles and skin-care products assembled at the Concord factory.

She took the aromatherapy products from a former partner and trains women to make the products from scratch; then market and distribute them. They're being distributed for the holidays with other products inside the gift baskets.

But the factory is just one element of the program. The other is a catering business and bistro located inside the offices of Varian Inc. in Walnut Creek. Each element is meant to employ women who were battered, or who are trying to get off welfare while they're working, and simultaneously attain life, or "soft" skills along with work skills they can use in the future.

Betty Jaramillo is an employee at the Safe Haven factory and is learning how to make candles, lotions and oils with the Safe Haven brand name and to bottle and label them. I'm learning all the ins and outs of this kind of business," Jaramillo said.

At the Express Yourself Bistro, participants learn essential aspects of the catering and restaurant business. The bistro appears well-maintained, with customers filing into the airy room to make their own tacos.

The factory, however, is in a messy condition, with dirt on the ground and products lying in disarray everywhere.

There are several reasons for that. Justice-Guard is looking for a building with lower rent and expects the factory to be moving to a different location.

And she doesn't want just to move--she wants to expand. One room of the factory contains nothing but a few torn cardboard boxes. Justice-Guard hopes to see computers lined up in rows for computer training in that room. She would also like to see a daycare center in another part of the building.

People whom she talked to told Justice-Guard that her vision was too big. But her vision, incrementally, is being attained.

"It's a big vision," she said. "It's taken a lot to get where it is."

To accommodate a full-service catering business that is able to hire more people, Varian Inc. has provided $70,000 to knock out a wall and expand the Express Yourself Bistro; in addition, UPS recently gave the program a $100,000 grant to expand and to include training in life skills.

The Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Division uses Justice-Guard's program as a referral for women wanting to get off welfare.

"She definitely has a vision and mission in mind to assist people to become self-sufficient," said Sandy Bustillo, a work force services specialist for Employment and Human Services. "Her heart is definitely where the mission is."

Bustillo said vocational training and employment programs such as Justice-Guard's are important for people raising children.

"It's hard to stop life and school when you have kids to take care of," she said. "Karen is recognizing the needs of a population who might have additional needs."

Rhonda Ryan of UPS agreed. The UPS Foundation--the charitable arm of UPS--awards grants to organizations recommended by UPS employees. Justice-Guard's program was the only one chosen for the $100,000 grant out of an area that included California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Alaska.

UPS officials saw the bistro and the factory and were impressed that Justice-Guard was filling a need not addressed by other organizations, Ryan said.

The money will go toward Justice-Guard's envisioned "resource center," which will provide information to all women who are in need in the community. A key part of the resource center is a new handbook on job and soft skills that Justice-Guard spearheaded.

Consultant Linda Nickey was hired to write the soft-skills portion of the text. She said Justice-Guard's training program has existed for the last several months, but the life-skills portion will get off the ground in January when four to eight people will go through both the job-training and soft-skills programs.

"We're really getting the first set of students for the beginning, middle and end of the program in January," Nickey said.

For Justice-Guard, the whole program is the realization of a dream.

"It's been a long, hard journey," she said. "People told me I couldn't do it."