ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Essential work has become a pandemic buzzword. 

Work essential is what a Rochester back-to-work program teaches people whose lives have taken a turn.

Hope Initiatives in Rochester welcomes people from addiction, incarceration, or poverty to help build furniture for some of this area's most needy families. Most arrive after doing wrong — the way Ashely Evans got to this small factory floor near Frontier Field. 

"Consequences could be help to others. How? Because I'm doing this right now. I'm making it for somebody that needs it. Even though I'm here because of something I did. I'm doing something good for somebody else," Evans said.

Thousands of pieces of furniture are made by the volunteers and small staff at Hope Initiatives each year.