eKART Helps Put Chad’s Hope Resident Brian Fisher on Road to Success with Welding Training
Brian Fisher was able to get his welding certification with the help of eKART.
For more than 15 years, Brian Fisher was driving blindly through life.
“I’d been using drugs since 2001 and I’ve always just been on that easy street,” Fisher explains during a socially-distanced interview.
The routes he took through life brought him to multiple drug-related criminal charges, including a DUI and a domestic violence charge, both of which Fisher deeply regrets now.
“I’d just kind of been driving life myself, and I always just ended up on that dead-end street,” Fisher says. “It’s gotten me nowhere.”
Fisher had been living in Tennessee since 2010 with his extended family. Though recently he had gotten his own life back on track, he was still in the presence of what he calls bad behaviors from his family and friends.
“My family…they were on the same paths, the same roads and same routes (that I had been on),” he says, clearing his throat.
By early summer 2020, Fisher says he had begun praying to figure out what he needed to do to keep his life from going in the wrong direction again.
“God spoke to me and told me to seek out a church family,” he explains. “I looked into a faith-based treatment program, and finally God spoke to me one night about coming here. By the end of that week I was there.”
“There” is Chad’s Hope in Manchester, Ky., a faith-based, residential recovery care program for substance-addicted men. Fisher thought he was coming to the program for a bit of spiritual healing, but got more than he thought possible thanks to a new regional program—eKART.
eKART (Eastern Kentucky Addiction Recovery and Training) is an initiative of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP), Inc., that works with local drug courts and other agencies to bridge the gulf between recovery and productive participation in the workforce by providing individuals with valuable career, training, and supportive services, while actively cultivating transformational job opportunities. It aims to help former addicts get back on their feet with job trainings and placements.
“I expected to just learn about the word and to grow with God, but I was very surprised when I heard about eKART,” he says. “I was really excited because not only do I get to learn about the word of God, but I also get to better myself in a trade.”
Chad’s Hope offered a welding certification class, with the help of eKART, which Fisher and his peers have been enrolled in since August 2020.
“Now I have something under my belt, more of a base under me to stand on that says, hey, this is what I can do and it gives you a confidence and more of a drive to be able to stand up a little taller.”
“Here I am, 30 years old, and I’ve been working in a factory for three years and I’ve never had any college experience or anything extra with school,” Fisher says. “I was really excited and really grabbed a hold of it in a good way to take advantage of it in the best way.”
Fisher explains that eKART was able to provide him and his classmates with any and all equipment that they needed for the class, including boots and welding helmets. And the process to enroll in eKART was a breeze, he adds, with only a short amount of paperwork needing to be filled out.
With another six months to go at Chad’s Hope, Fisher says he feels more positive about his future and employment prospects.
“I have some ideas (on where I want to work) but at the same time I’m leaving them up to God,” he says. “I’m just trying to see where God takes me.”
“Now I have something under my belt, more of a base under me to stand on that says, hey, this is what I can do and it gives you a confidence and more of a drive to be able to stand up a little taller,” he continues.
Fisher says he would recommend eKART to anyone struggling with addiction-related consequences that are hindering their ability to find work.
“It’s definitely something that someone should make time for,” he says. “I’m really grateful and thankful for it.”
EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.
