BLOOMINGTON — In a warehouse in Bloomington with the words “Big Boy’s Moving” and “we matter too” draped across their sweatshirts, Ajay Jackson and his crew are hard at work recycling products, breaking down boxes and sorting medical equipment.
“It’s a business that’s for-profit that’s equally for people,” Big Boy’s Moving owner Ajay Jackson said.
“I have done more time incarcerated than I have done free, for close to doing three decades of my life in an eight by 10 in some type of dormitory,” Jackson added.
It is work that Aaliyah Wells and Kole Gunderman could have never imagined doing at one point in their lives.
“I was in public housing for a while, I was on assistance for a while, but since I’ve been here, I’ve been off of it. I make enough money to provide for me, my family and anybody I care for,” Wells said.
The two are part of a team that works hand-in-hand with Cook Medical Center and the City of Bloomington to give people a second chance at life.
“I was training to be a part of the police force, and I got caught up in a little situation and nobody would hire me and I came here and they taught me just a lot,” Gunderman said.
Jackson and his wife Ana started Big Boy’s Moving back in 2016 as a way to give people who have faced adversity an opportunity to reinvent themselves.
“For us, you are working alongside other people for these men and women are coming home they have done many years in prison, they have troubled backgrounds they are not ready to just be working out there just like that,” Jackson said.
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