As unemployment surged during the Great Recession, Marietta-based MUST Ministries responded with nuts-and-bolts job training. MUST is the only nonprofit of its type to have alliances with OSHA and the National Safety Council for certification for specialized jobs like forklift operation. Through a partnership with the UGA Extension, MUST provides ServSafe food handling certification; restaurants are required to have at least one ServSafe-
certified staffer on every shift. When some grads still didn’t land jobs, MUST uncovered a practical concern: Workplaces require safety shoes that can cost $70 and up, cash someone who’s unemployed won’t have. So MUST removed that hurdle, too, with mobile visits from uniform supplier Cintas. After MUST began to supply footwear—steel-toed or composite for OSHA, nonskid for ServSafe—placement increased from around 60 percent to 77 percent.
