ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 12, 1996 TAG: 9612120020
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
Brenda Rainbow quit school at 15. She married, had two children and divorced.
She had trouble getting a job - one with a future - without a high school diploma. She was tired of working odd jobs, most of them involving heavy manual labor.
And she was tired of bouncing on and off of welfare.
"I was determined I had to do something to better my life," said Rainbow, of Roanoke. "I had to make changes in my life."
Rainbow earned her General Equivalency Diploma through a Total Action Against Poverty education program. She then entered TAP's Custom Training program, which provides classroom and on-the-job training through partnerships with area businesses.
Rainbow's participation led to a full-time job at Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield as a customer service representative.
"I've been off public assistance since 1991,'' said Rainbow, 44. "I'm proud of where I've come from and what I've done with my life."
But TAP estimates that only 6 percent of the people who need the kind of education, training and employment services that Rainbow received are actually getting them.
Through "This Valley Works," a TAP initiative launched Wednesday, the agency intends to reach many more of those people.
This Valley Works combines TAP's 12 education, employment and job-training programs into a single, more concentrated effort to help school dropouts, welfare clients, ex-prisoners and recovering substance abusers overcome barriers to employment.
Less than a year remains before the new state welfare plan begins requiring welfare recipients in the Roanoke and New River valleys to work for their benefits. Given that, according to TAP president Ted Edlich, the project is critical.
Gov. George Allen last week announced he was stepping up the timetable for VIEW - the Virginia Initiative for Employment not Welfare - the welfare plan's work component. The Roanoke and New River valleys had been scheduled to phase in VIEW on April 1, 1999. The new date is Oct. 1, 1997.
Through established partnerships with businesses and educational institutions, TAP has been able to provide such services as adult education classes, youth and adult GED preparatory classes, entrepreneur training, literacy training and work experience. This Valley Works will expand those efforts.
"In This Valley Works, TAP has brought together a number of programs already operating that have work and employment as their ultimate goal," Edlich said. "In the future, we hope to work with businesses in the valley to develop new programs that offer promise to individuals for upgrading their lives."
TAP already has established partnerships with five businesses for TAP's Custom Training program, said Annette Lewis, TAP's employment director. Thirty businesses participate in TAP's work experience program, in which welfare recipients are employed in nonprofit or public agencies to get on-the-job training.
But TAP needs more involvement from businesses and individuals for This Valley Works to succeed, said John Pecaric, vice president of the Roanoke division of R.R. Donnelley and Sons Inc. and chairman of a 16-member commission that developed the project.
"To meet the challenges we're facing is going to involve a commitment beyond the existing people who are involved," Pecaric said. "We need additional companies and additional individuals who are going to be committed to making this work. This is going to be a critical issue for this community, and we have to try to solve it."
The project is patterned after "Cleveland Works," a job-training program in Ohio that has been touted as having helped 7,000 people get off welfare since 1987. Cleveland Works has served as a model for projects in eight other cities in the United States.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB