Ex-criminals, returning war veterans, and people who have been homeless tend to share one thing in common: difficulty assimilating back into society. The reasons for why are vastly different, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that many of these people struggle with overcoming their past to succeed today. Rocky McKay is doing his part to try and change that.
The Atlanta Black Star recently ran a profile piece on McKay earlier this month on this man and his nonprofit organization called The Operation Organization, Inc. One of the organization’s initiatives is known as Operation Reset, a program to help veterans, nonviolent ex-offenders, and homeless individuals make a successful and meaningful return to society by giving them training, skills, education, and confidence building.
McKay is from Long Island but now runs RTR Consulting, an Atlanta-based roofing business. McKay’s clients often begin working in the roofing industry, which generates about $46 billion a year in revenue in the United States, to help them build work history and job skills.
A successful businessman today, McKay overcame similar struggles of his own growing up that pushed him to establish his current organization.
“I can say that the Operation Organization and the Operation Restart program came through a personal experience of mine, where I found myself getting locked up one day,” McKay said. “I was locked up for 90 days… Here’s a circle of people that I look at and I stay far away from, or basically drove past without acknowledging — not understanding their life, not understanding their struggles.”
This experience stuck with him and later when he was working with his roofing team a bus of ex-criminals being transported to a halfway house pulled up next to a job they were working on. He realized all these people needed jobs and yet the way society is set up would make it almost impossible for them to find any.
“It was my chance to say, ‘I can help you. I can help these people.’ And from that point Operation Reset was born.”
To learn more about Rocky McKay, check out the full story here.
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