April 30, 2013. The Daily Progress.
The University of Virginia Medical Center, Martha Jefferson Hospital and Piedmont Virginia Community College made a commitment Monday night to help 3,000 unemployed young people in the Charlottesville area get jobs.
After a period of study by the Interfaith Movement Promoting Actions by Congregations Together (IMPACT), the school and hospitals agreed to start a program that will provide scholarships for qualified students to work towards careers in healthcare. The initiative was announced at IMPACT’s annual Nehemiah Action, a gathering of about 1,800 people from 26 congregations. Each year, IMPACT reports the progress of its past year’s initiative and gathers commitments to combat a new problem.
The unemployment rate for people between 18 and 30 in the area is 14 percent, said Kristen Schenk, who coordinated the study for IMPACT.
“I work on a daily basis with the [underemployed] and unemployed, but I was still surprised to see a 14 percent unemployment rate among our people between 18 and 30,” said Juandiego Wade, chairman of the Charlottesville School Board and a professional career counselor. “Consider this collaborative a benefactor to thousands of young adults.”
“Some basic upfront tuition assistance is often the first step to getting people in the door and up the career ladder,” Schenk said. “Many of these young people lack access to training programs after high school to get them on the first rung of the career ladder.”
Besides tuition assistance, the program will provide job coaching and mentoring, transportation and childcare to those who do not have their own, and the opportunity for apprenticeships.
Marie Fisher, a nurse’s assistant at UVa Medical Center, said that financial aid was instrumental in getting her where she is.
“Just one year of job training or community college — that is the tipping point for getting people out of poverty,” she said. “I tell all the young people I know to pursue careers in healthcare, because that’s where the jobs are.”
IMPACT took the first steps to finding solutions to homelessness Monday night, getting Charlottesville and Albemarle County to agree to a roundtable meeting to discuss the problem with People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry (PACEM), Region Ten community services board and others to coordinate an effort to solve homelessness.
There are more than 700 homeless residents in the Charlottesville area, at least 500 of whom are children, IMPACT officials said. In the county, the number of homeless children has ballooned by 650 percent, IMPACT said.
The organization pointed to a lack of coordination between service providers in the area, including the city of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and Region Ten. Group leaders said their goal by the fall is to have a common measurable goal for all of the organizations to work toward.
“We don’t want to tell them what that goal should be,” said Kim Wilkens, chair of the IMPACT Homelessness Committee. “We want them to identify those goals and report back to us at the Fall Assembly.”
The group also hopes to help establish a system to help service providers better take advantage of federal money available for programs against homelessness.
“We know that groups in our area are leaving money on the table because they are not collaborating enough,” Wilkens said.
Sarah Kelley, a local pastor who was homeless as a youth, asked the congregation to have compassion for the less fortunate.
“It’s easy to say they need to get a job when you have a job and all your necessities to stay in one place. Don’t look down on anyone, unless you are looking down to pick them up,” she said. “You never know, but you can end up homeless through no fault of your own.”
Dorothy Jordan, IMPACT co-president, told the assembly that hopes and prayers are not enough to affect change.
“We do not seek to start service projects or charities, we seek changes that get to the root causes of community problems,” she said. “We do it because preaching sermons about justice is not enough. Praying for justice is not enough. Complaining about injustice is not enough.”
