He was once an inmate at the Danville Correctional Center. He’s been out of prison for good since June of 2022. Today, Mike Brawn, now a resident of South Barrington, Illinois; is promoting a program he began as a way to give ex-convicts the opportunities they need, and give human resource departments and businesses the labor they need.
During a Wednesday (March 6th) lunchtime program at the Danville Area Community College Bremer Center, Vermilion Advantage co-hosted a presentation from Brawn about his Vermilion County based CORE Re-Entry program. CORE stands for Community Opportunity Resources and Employment. He provided some disturbing statistics, such as up to one in three adults facing a criminal background. And of those once incarcerated, 27% are unemployed.
So often, it’s because of laws that prevent released inmates from taking certain types of jobs. Or perhaps a company disallows it, even if state laws saw they are not supposed to do that. What this world needs right now, Brawn says, is getting everyone on the same page. He was actually working on that before he left the Danville Correctional Center, where he had founded a peer to peer mentoring program.
CORE Re-Entry program founder Mike Brawn explains its goals of finding work and livelihoods for those getting out of prison to area residents, local officials, and business and human resources representatives; during Wednesday’s program at DACC’s Bremer Center.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: And I came up with it because I noticed that there wasn’t any kind of specific re-entry programming in Vermilion County. And, I also had some buy in from the community before I came home from prison myself. Through Vermilion Advantage, I was able to present the program to them; actually while I was still incarcerated.
Brawn says, especially now, with the labor shortage we’ve seen since the pandemic; keeping a large group of people out of the labor pool, as well as keeping them from their full potential, simply has to stop.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: It’s one of the reasons that you see businesses, big businesses especially; really talking about this. Like I said, the book that I gave to everybody here, “Untapped Talent,” is written by the chief economist on the commercial side for Fifth Third Bank. Because he recognized that there is a labor shortage in this country. And there’s a pool of people that historically have been kept out of the labor pool, or at least have barriers to succeed in the labor pool.
Brawn says he’d like to see the Workforce Development Re-Entry Act made permanent; in addition to state legislation and federal legislation not contradicting each other, so that solid opportunities are available for both those needing a chance to work, and those needing workers.
