THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 11, 1995 TAG: 9503110275
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHEAPSIDE LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Alice Coles opened her eyes one day and decided she and her friends could do it themselves. All of it. Everything they had been relying on powerful ``others'' to do.
Her neighbor, Cozzie Lockwood, agreed.
Both are underemployed.
Coles picks crabs two days a week for a local seafood distributor, and Lockwood works two hours a day as a home health aide. They looked around and saw that many of their neighbors in the Eastern Shore hamlet of Bayview were underemployed as well, or didn't have a job at all.
But they wanted to work.
So Coles and Lockwood, with the Rev. Anthony Ruffin and Wanda Reverend, decided to organize their own job fair. They called 15 of the area's biggest employers. Ten showed up. They had about 100 jobs open - 85 full-time, with benefits.
``The people are more excited about this job fair than we are,'' said Lockwood. ``They really believed that there were no jobs in this part of the county, but we proved there are.''
On Friday, they held the fair at Rev. Ruffin's New Jerusalem Holy Church in Cheapside, a few miles south of Bayview. The doors were supposed to open at 2 p.m., but people started arriving before noon. By 1:30 p.m., the church's unfinished, unheated social hall was nearly filled with hopeful applicants. They sat quietly on the cold metal folding chairs, waiting for the employers to arrive.
By 2 p.m. there were 97 people waiting to apply for jobs. By 2:30 p.m. there were more than 140. After that, the room was so crowded that the estimate went as high as 300.
All kinds of people from Accomack and Northampton counties had come to find work. Black, white, men, women, teenagers, elderly. They crowded the tables and leaned on exposed two-by-fours to fill out applications. Some even went out to their cars to write.
Most people had reasonable goals: a better job with benefits, or any job at all.
``I read about it in the paper,'' said 18-year-old Sherone Northam of Accomac ``I'd like to be a cashier.''
Representatives were arranged around the edges of the room under magic-marker signs. They included Perdue Inc., the big chicken processor; Bayshore Concrete; Shore Stop; Food City; Kmart; Wendell Distributing; Sunset Beach Motel; and the Eastern Shore Community College . Organizers provided pencils for everyone and counselors to help people who weren't confident about filling out applications.
The jobs included those for chicken-processing line workers, truck drivers, cashiers, housekeepers, concrete workers and management trainees. Some start at minimum wage, others pay up to $9 an hour. They offer steady work and benefits. That's a step up for people who do seasonal work on farms or in seafood packing plants.
Larry Veber is an Eastern Shore personnel consultant who gave the Bayview folks some tips on setting up the fair.
``We only contacted 15 employers,'' he said. ``Just imagine how many jobs we could scare up if we contacted everybody.''
Ruffin helped direct a constant stream of cars into the parking lot. ``I haven't seen anything like this before,'' he said.
Part of the job fair's success can be attributed to good planning and advertising. Coles and the others called potential applicants. They put out fliers that said, ``JOBS JOBS JOBS. People need jobs and jobs need people.''
Ruffin broadcasts a Sunday sermon on WESR, an Accomac radio station. He mentioned the jobs fair on the program. Then Coles, Lockwood, Reverend and Ruffin went on a radio talk show to get the word out.
``We learn and go at the same time,'' said Coles.
Earlier in the week, they held a workshop to teach nervous job seekers how to present themselves to employers. About 30 people came. At the workshop, Ruffin and others spoke about transportation and benefits, state-supported child care, interviews, self-respect, and what Coles called ``stick-and-stay.''
``They don't know the procedure,'' said Coles of her neighbors. ``They go on the job sagging, they weren't presentable.''
For Ruffin, the jobs fair is just one step in a much bigger process. People can't depend on the government, said Ruffin, because the system is clogged with red tape. He believes that people need to develop a ``village mentality.''
``It takes the whole village to take care of the people,'' said Ruffin. ``If we begin to teach the folks, they can fend for themselves instead of going on welfare and food stamps.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color map
KEYWORDS: EMPLOYMENT EASTERN SHORE by CNB