Cara is founded in 1991 as “The Cara Program” by entrepreneur and philanthropist Tom Owens, who had traveled extensively contributing to global projects aimed at helping people living in poverty. Upon returning home, Tom realized there was work to be done in his own backyard and soon dedicated himself to reducing poverty in Chicago by connecting quality jobs with the people who needed them. In its early days, Cara’s office was Tom’s car as he traveled from shelter to shelter preparing and coaching people for interviews and referring them to open positions in firms where he had business connections.

Cara finds our first home when we embed in Old St. Patrick’s Church in downtown Chicago. It is in the basement of a then convent that much of Cara’s core curriculum—and our signature morning Motivations—came to fruition.

Retention services are first offered to ensure success in long-term employment. Today, more than a third of Cara’s active participant population are in retention services and 70% of our permanent job placements achieve one year on the job.

We launch our first social enterprise, Cleanslate, with our first crew in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. Through this move, Cara is able to create our own employment opportunities for the population we serve. Today, Cleanslate creates hundreds of jobs each year and is beautifying more than four dozen communities in Chicago and beyond.

We open a second micro-campus in the Bronzeville community – dubbed our South Side Campus. This space is more of a drop-in for members of the quad communities who may not be enrolled in our traditional training, but they still need access to employment services, resource support, a computer lab, and trainings in things like financial and digital literacy, tax preparation, and more. Today, the SSC operates out of the historic Rosenwald Courts.

We purchase the now Thomas and Mary Owens Center, a 30,000 square-foot training facility located right down the street from our humble beginnings. This move gives us the space and security needed to ensure we can continue to scale our services to job seekers. 

We launch our second social enterprise, Cara Connects, a mission-driven staffing firm. Within two short years, Cara Connects wins the Social Innovator of the Year Award at the Chicago Innovation Awards. Today, Cara Connects places our participants into hundreds of short- and long-term employment positions with leading Chicago companies each year.

Lutheran Social Services of Indiana (LSSI) came to us with a question – how can we take what is happening within the four walls of Cara in Chicago and bring it to their organization in Ft. Wayne, Indiana? Together, we co-created a workforce development program, LSSI Works, steeped in our methodology, and with that, our first Cara affiliate was born.

With the launch of our second affiliate, Atlanta Mission @Work, we also launch Cara Plus, the expansion arm of Cara. Through trainings, partnerships, and Cara Institute, the Cara Plus team works with employers and organizations to grow, deploy, and strengthen viable workforce solutions in communities all across the country.

We mark 30 years since Tom Owens first set out on this mission. To help mark the occasion, we introduced a reframe of our enterprise to Cara Collective, to better tell the story of our four entities – Cara, Cleanslate, Cara Connects, and Cara Plus – and how they work toward our vision to eradicate poverty.