Nonprofit Seeks to Give Seniors Job Skills and Opportunities

  
 
A nonprofit organization is looking to help low-income seniors build new skills to help them in the workplace while providing them with the training they need to succeed. Experience Works is a national charitable community-based nonprofit organization that seeks to help seniors get the training, support service and job development assistance that they need to find jobs.

Participant assistant Laura White explained that anyone over the age of 55 with low income is encouraged to check out the program. The organization will be taking applications for various positions on Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Starke County Community Service Center, located at 311 E. Culver Road in Knox.

White said seniors who are accepted into the program are trained at host agencies, where they will develop the skills they need.

“A host agency is any agency that is a nonprofit organization,” she explained. “So, more than likely, with the funds being cut already, they are in dire need of assistance. It could be janitorial, it could be administrative assistant, it could be just a helper.”

White said the program is run by the Department of Labor as a Title Five program, and Experience Works has been asked to increase their enrollment in the Starke County area. She said seniors will train for 20 hours a week, and of those 20 hours, two of them will be spent with her or on the computer to build skills.

“We train them in computers, resume writing, how to search for jobs, how to do an interview, how to get on the internet and do all those basic things, so anything and everything they are going to need to help them increase their possibility of finding work,” she said.

For more information, call (219) 362-2175 ext. 530.