‘Job clubs’ target unemployed

The Charlottesville office of the Virginia Employment Commission is trying something different in Nelson and the surrounding counties to help unemployed people re-enter the workforce.

Outreach workers from the commission are starting Job Clubs, a five-week program designed to help the unemployed improve their work skills and find jobs, said Alphonso Taylor, the outreach worker for the commission in Nelson County.

During the weekly sessions, members of the job club will talk about networking, the interview process, resume building and financial aspects of unemployment, Taylor said.

“This kind of initiative is new,” he said. “It takes people like myself away from the office and puts them in the counties where we know there is unemployment and we work to get them re-employed.”

The program also helps unemployed workers go online, to register on the commission Web site, gives them access to vocational training if needed and identifies any obstacles they may need to overcome to find another job.

In Nelson County, the first job club was held June 29 at the Rockfish Valley Community Center in Nellysford and another will be held July 8 at the Nelson Center in Lovingston.

“The basic idea is to help people with skills, with job seeking, to allow them to get re-employed,” Taylor said.

The program is an initiative is a state government effort and is funded by federal stimulus money, he said.

“(The state) thought that the best way of getting people re-employed was to start a process that sort of re-educates them” and helps them gain new skills, Taylor said. “That’s how it became the name of a club, because what we want are individuals to work together with someone like myself as a facilitator to do that.”

The job club program has also already begun in Louisa and Fluvanna counties and other outreach workers are starting in the city of Charlottesville and in Albemarle County.

Taylor said this program is a response to rising unemployment claims.

“Based upon the economic conditions that there are, there are more people who have applied for and are receiving unemployment benefits than there has been at any other time in history,” he said. “Eventually those types of monies will not be there as more people become unemployed. It doesn’t mean that you won’t get money, but that money might have to come from other sources.”

Taylor said he has identified at least 300 people in Nelson County who could benefit from the job club and if enough people are interested, the program will continue.

“I think it will help,” Taylor said. “I don’t believe everyone realizes the resources that are out there. And that there are people willing to help them.”

For more information, call the Virginia Employment Commission at (434) 906-1716.