Mark Loranger, president and CEO of nonprofit Chrysalis, is giving me a tour of the organization’s downtown location when a voice sounds through the PA system, calling everyone to the lobby for a bell-ringing ceremony. Case managers and accountants leave their offices and head down the hallway. Clients step out of the computer lab and classrooms to gather around a high counter lined with sign-in clipboards. Anthony, a young man in torn jean shorts and a t-shirt, shakes a small golden bell from side to side as the audience applauds. The ringing of the “success bell” means he’s secured a job.
The ceremony lasts all of three or four minutes, during which Anthony shares significant moments from the last few months of his life. He was released from prison in March, then connected with Chrysalis soon after and visited the center daily. He worked with the “roads crew,” a Chrysalis extension that offers clients short-term work experience, before deciding to look for something different on his own. He walked into Clifton’s Cafeteria, got a job interview and was hired as a bus boy a few days later.
It’s a typical, if fast, Chrysalis story, according to Loranger. Since the mid-1980s, the organization has provided support for men and women disconnected from the workforce, most often due to homelessness, time in jail and/or criminal convictions.