Job Training

On a daily basis, Lazarus House staff work with hundreds of people who are unemployed and facing many barriers to employment. Unemployed people regularly come to Lazarus House to receive job counseling and advocacy. It is for these reasons that Lazarus House is implementing a customized job training program that integrates initial training with an employment component that is administered internally.

The Lazarus House Job Training Program was developed with one thing in mind: to move families and individuals out of poverty and homelessness and to assist them in becoming productive and self sufficient citizens within their communities.

The objective of the Lazarus House Job Training Program is to develop and implement a comprehensive, replicable program to prepare low-income persons for the work world. Lazarus House provides classroom education, pre-employment skills classes, job training and ongoing mentoring. With this innovative program, these individuals will have the opportunity to increase their employment potential, learn how to effectively retain a good job, and/or expand their advancement potential with their personal employment experiences.

Although this specific job training program is new for Lazarus House, the organization's other services and programs provide appropriate background for this effort. Case management, with job counseling and referrals to outside sources of support, is a daily activity. Further, three thrift stores run by Lazarus House have long brought in needed revenue for programs and provided jobs for current and former guests of the shelter and day center. Moreover, the Executive Director and staff members have made numerous trips to other states to learn from the experiences of other programs that have incorporated job training and employment opportunities in the context of a business. Lazarus House is also receiving technical assistance from Eastern Bag and Paper, an industrial cleaning equipment and supply company, in developing the curriculum and in other aspects such as the formula for bidding jobs.

Lazarus House SPARK*L.E. Cleaning Services is an office & industrial and private home cleaning business. There is training specific to those tasks incorporated into our training program. However, Lazarus House is emphasizing transferability of skills and advancement capacity through the pre-employment, work maturity and basic skill's components. The specific occupational training will also encourage participants to pursue interests in areas related to the cleaning business, such as record keeping and financial records. While employed at SPARK*L.E. Cleaning Services, the trainees are paid for 30 hours per week of work and 10 hours per week of continued classroom experience.

In some job training situations, the transition from occupational and basic educational training to an independent employment situation is often difficult. Some people are unable to find jobs and those who do often have difficulty keeping them, either because of continued deficiency in skills, child care, language barriers or transportation problems and/or simply through down sizing, suffering from the last-hired-first-fired tendency. Flexibility is incorporated into the program so that we can respond to individual developmental issues.

The initial training lasts for eight weeks. At the end of eight weeks of pre-employability, work maturity, basic educational (especially English as a Second Language-ESL), and occupational skills training, participants are offered an opportunity to be hired by Lazarus House in its cleaning business for a up to a 6 month period after that time with the assistance of Lazarus House staff the employee is expected to have secured another more permanent position.

Lazarus House works with the Department of Transitional Assistance to help establish eligible participants, and to reach potential participants who otherwise may not have come to the attention of the staff. Lazarus House provides oral and written information about this program in English and Spanish to organizations who work with the appropriate populations. Among these organizations are Bread and Roses, Emmaus House, The Salvation Army, Neighbors in Need, The Lawrence Housing Authority, Greater Lawrence Community Action Council, Community Teamwork, Inc., Daybreak House, YWCA and the YMCA.

Jobs Related Press Articles

"The Employment World"

Great support website. Be sure to click on the morale boosting "Job Articles" in the lower left hand corner.

Employees with computer skills worth weight in gold

Sunday, January 14, 2001; By Andy Murray, Eagle-Tribune Writer

Laborer to computer guru

Tuesday, January 11, 2001; By Katheleen Conti, Eagle-Tribune Writer

Growing number of Valley residents lack job skills

Tuesday, January 9, 2001; By Andy Murray, Eagle-Tribune Writer