Marty McCormick of Rise Up Bakery brings freshly baked cookies out to cooling racks at the bakery in Williamsport. Trainees in the program come from a variety of local agencies, some from probation and parole and some from transitional living. The trainees learn about not only baking but also get work skills like resume writing too. The bakery, which operates out of the basement kitchen at New Covenant United Church of Christ, began as an idea of Marty McCormick and his wife, Wendy, almost two years ago, when the first trainees were brought on board. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

Trainees for Rise Up Village Bakery come through various agencies such adult probation, parole, both state and county, also with transitional living centers, where people coming out of state prison often stay when they first get out here and other agencies.

“I always like to have trainees that are coming into the program involved in other things, and have some support and supervision by other agencies. So that’s where we get our trainees, and I’ve gotten people from treatment court as well,” Marty McCormick, who founded the program with his wife Wendy, said.

For Steve Barner, who graduated from the program, worked until retiring and has now returned as a volunteer, the program helped him deal with the anxiety he felt after coming out of 20 years of incarceration.

“One of the main things that (it) really helped me with was anxiety and stuff you know, to calm down. I became part of a program that was accomplishing things, and that’s really where it helped me the most, is to become normalized again. You know, because I had done time, incarcerated and I got out, it takes a while to adapt again,” Barner said.

“The other thing that the program provides for us is a really good support system, you know, because if we’re involved in this, we’re not involved in things we shouldn’t be involved in,” he said.

Over the four years since it started, Marty estimated that about a couple dozen clients, like Barner, have made the effort to get something out of the program

“We’ve had a lot of people participate in the program, but at one point or another, some of them have made it, stayed on, others find that it’s not really to their liking or it’s not a good fit for them. So they may have been here a week or two or so, and we find that they just aren’t ready to do this kind of thing. Yeah, or maybe it’s just not there to their liking. So we’ve had a lot of people. We’ve had probably a couple dozen that have made the effort to really get something out of the program, and have been able to go on and find employment,” he said.

Although the end product of the baking is the baked goods that are then offered for sale to the public, but for the trainees, there are also soft skills that are learned that enable them to re-enter the workforce.

“I meet with the clients, trainees in a group each week, usually and also individually. And we work on a lot of different issues, whatever their immediate concerns are, plus, getting a job is often, generally the most important thing so that they can be able to support themselves,” Marty said.

“We do a lot of job search strategy, planning and interview practice and things of that nature. And the volunteers are the heart of this program, and we couldn’t do this without a lot of help, a lot of volunteers, a lot of community support and that kind of thing. So it’s an effort of a lot of people. It’s not just about Wendy and I, but the fact that we have good kitchen crew volunteers that come in and help with our sales,” Marty said.

Marty pointed out that one of the biggest obstacles that most of the trainees have is their criminal history.

“We talk with them about how to present themselves as someone who has changed and made a difference in the way they live. We tell them to learn what we call a turnaround talk. It’s to explain to a prospective employer how they’ve made changes in their lives and how they’re not the person that they were, their criminal offense does not define them anymore. You know that they have enough turnaround in their life,” he said.