Making It Personal

Posted October 1, 2010

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT lessons Sheila Green has learned is that sometimes you don’t choose your path in life. For some, destiny lies before them and waits until they are ready to take the first big step.

Sheila’s journey began more than 30 years ago, when the then-17-year-old saw disappointment in her mother’s eyes. The eleventh grader had gone against the solid upbringing her mother tried so hard to instill in her and her five siblings. She had become pregnant.

“I saw the hurt in her eyes when I told her,” she recalls. “But my mother never said anything negative to me about it.” Instead, her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother rallied around her, praising her and supporting her. They helped her get through high school and college and into a good job where she could provide for herself and her son, Myron.

“I remember that day, the day I told my mother I was pregnant. I promised I would never hurt her again,” she says. “And, I prayed that day. I told God if he could get me through this, I’d serve him. I’d do whatever he wanted me to do.”

Over the next 20 years, seemed to fly by as Sheila moved on to open her own boutique, It’s Personal by Sheila, and raise her son to be a successful business owner himself. Then she got a call from a friend asking if she would volunteer her time to teach women who were overcoming challenges how to dress for job interviews. She readily agreed, thinking she could make time to teach one small class. However, she soon realized she wasn’t being asked to teach a class, but to start a Christian Women’s Job Corps (CWJC) program to equip women for jobs in her town.

To make matters more challenging, she would need to complete a three-day training course the CWJC offered in Ocala, Fla., a five-hour drive from Sheila’s home in Pensacola.  

With the demands of a business weighing her down, Sheila knew she had to cancel. But when she called the organizer to decline, she half-heartedly reconsidered. She was still reluctant about her decision to attend the training when she showed up at the event. Three days later however, Sheila was a changed woman.

“It ended up being a very nice trip. I got the passion in my heart,” she says. She realized that helping women find their potential was the path she was meant to take. It was her opportunity to thank God for pulling her through a difficult time in her own life, as well as her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother for supporting her when she was younger. Perhaps, by sharing that same love, she could help other women in crisis.

With little more than a promise of CWJC seed money if she could get the project off the ground in Pensacola, Sheila turned to the generosity of others. The organization found a home at Brownsville Baptist Church and was brought to life with light fixtures, paint, and furnishings from donations and the hard work of volunteers.

Then Sheila pulled together a team of volunteers who went door to door in the low-income area surrounding the church and surveyed the people. She asked what their most pressing needs were and learned that most women were looking for hope. They wanted an education – to earn their high school diploma – and to make something of themselves. It was a dream Sheila could relate to.

With the building completed and a curriculum based on needs of the people, volunteers made calls to the survey participants and circulated fliers in the community announcing the opening of CWJC. More than 50 women showed up the first day -- a testament to Sheila that she had made the right decision to open the center.

Seven years later, CWJC is still a success, providing women with training in life skills (e.g., raising children and budgeting) and job readiness (e.g., computer training and customer service skills). Each woman is paired with a mentor who follows the participant as she travels the road from dependency to self-sufficiency.

The organization serves women of all ages, races, and backgrounds. No one is turned away, and often participants come from dangerous situations that involve prostitution, physical and sexual abuse, or drugs. Through CWJC, Sheila has seen women who couldn’t read earn their GED, and others land jobs or enroll in college.  These stories are what she calls miracles.

“That’s the beauty of it all,” she says. “We want to set them up so they can support themselves for life.”

As site director, Sheila is a constant presence at CWJC. Each afternoon, when the center closes, she goes to work at her boutique. She is training another woman to take over the center as director, but she says she will continue to oversee the organization as chairman of the board.

Sheila has never been paid for her job with CWJC, at least, not with money. “Oh, I have been paid,” she says. “It’s not a check in my hand. I am being blessed.”

It may not have been the path Sheila planned to take, but starting CWJC in a community so obviously in need has fulfilled her life in ways she could have never imagined. “It is one of the hardest jobs I have ever done,” she says. “But it is also one of the most rewarding. I get to see the things most people never see: the miracles.

“And, to see peoples’ lives change, oh my goodness, I think we all cry for joy!”

SHELIA GREEN and her business, It’s Personal by Shelia, are Regions customers.

Everyone has a story.