Job Training

Disagreements with his family forced Martise Stewart from his home. And without anywhere to go, he ended up sleeping in a wooded area in Odenton. With colder weather approaching, Stewart, who is unemployed, made his way to the Light House Shelter in Annapolis. "They're helping me get my resume together," said Stewart, 29. "I've only been there two weeks so I'm getting myself together rapidly. " Beginning today, Light House residents, including Stewart, will start moving into a new, $8.3 million building — called the Light House Homeless Prevention and Support Center — which will greatly expand the number of clients and the services offered to serve the county's growing homeless population.

After a brief hiatus, the Hollywood Diner is back in business — but the city has other plans for the downtown eatery. Baltimore City, which owns the property, has terminated its lease with the Chesapeake Center for Youth Development, the nonprofit organization that has run the diner since 1991. In April, the comptroller's office will issue a request for proposals for a new operator of the property, made famous as a filming location for the Barry Levinson film "Diner. " "It is our goal to obtain an experienced restaurant operator that will provide quality, reasonably priced hot and cold food to the downtown patron," city Comptroller Joan M. Pratt said.

Cynthia MacKinnon says she is working at her dream job, thanks to training and encouragement she received at the Caroline Center in East Baltimore. The nonprofit center, run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a Roman Catholic religious order, celebrates its 15th anniversary Thursday with a salute to MacKinnon and others who acquired education and job skills within its walls. "We are flourishing," said Sister Patricia McLaughlin, the center's executive director. "Meeting all these wonderful women and watching them blossom has been a blessing to us. " More than 1,500 women have completed the center's employment readiness programs since it opened its doors on Somerset Street.

United Way of Central Maryland's Community Partnership Board of Carroll County recently awarded a community grant of $1,500 to the Westminster-based Target Community and Educational Services. Target serves Carroll County residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities achieve self-sufficiency. The grant will support Target's partnership with Junior Achievement of Central Maryland to help teach employment and independent living skills to 67 county residents. "We are grateful for this opportunity to partner with United Way ... and Junior Achievement to provide the training required to strengthen the employment skills critical to assist these individuals to live as independently as possible," said Tom Zirpoli, president and CEO of Target.

Finally, job training is in the headlines. And it is being lauded and maligned. The federal government has devoted millions to training grants and other training activities. But why invest scarce public funds in job training when there are no jobs? Let's get the facts straight. Training doesn't create jobs, but it does position individuals and communities for economic recovery, especially when a person is retrained for a new job with new skills. When training is tied to current and future employment needs, that training prepares workers with the skills that will equip them to be successful in their job search.

The Open Society Institute of Baltimore, a foundation funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, is giving $1.5 million to four city nonprofits for job training for low-income residents. The award will be accompanied by another $1.5 million of state and federal funds. The $3 million in funding will help provide job training and placement services to 141 people with criminal convictions who otherwise would be unable to find work. The four nonprofits receiving funding are the Center for Urban Families, Civic Works, Group Ministries and the Job Opportunities Task Force.

Often, the best ideas for a column come from readers. One reader recently objected to a column about Republicans vs. Democrats and said the real issue for voters is, instead, the people vs. elected officials of both parties. He wanted to throw all the rascals out. I think he failed to note that all of those rascal officials were chosen by the people not so long ago. All of our local officials, all of our Carroll County delegation and our representatives to Congress are Republicans.

President Bush and Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton advocate "workfare" -- requiring welfare recipients to get education or job training if they want to receive benefits. But the story of the Human Development Institute, a small job-training company located in Baltimore, shows the difficulty of implementing such a policy under Washington's conflicting regulatory structure.HDI did what it promised -- it made workers out of welfare mothers. Seventy-five percent of the 1,500 women who passed through HDI's training sessions found jobs.

WASHINGTON -- The most flagrant examples of wasteful government spending are federal and state job-training programs, hampered as they are by duplication, waste and conflicting regulations.The General Accounting Office estimates that the federal government oversees some 154 separate job-training programs, administered by more than a dozen different agencies.The cost to taxpayers is close to $25 billion a year, but that's not the only chapter in this story of waste.These bureaucratic job-training programs aim at achieving only minimum skill levels and continue to pump taxpayer dollars into training directed at yesterday's jobs, particularly low-skill management jobs.

The Baltimore City Life Museums is offering a free job-training program for economically disadvantaged adults ages 55 and up who are interested in museum work.Classes meet 16 hours a week, March 14 to May 16.Qualified applicants train to fill jobs as tour guides, word processors, gift shop salespeople and other museum positions. Travel stipends and job-placement counseling are provided. Call

Baltimore County will begin giving priority to veterans when making local government hiring decisions, officials announced Tuesday, a policy focused particularly on those returning from conflicts overseas. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz announced the decision at the National Guard's Gen. Harry C. Ruhl Armory in Towson, surrounded by uniformed soldiers and yellow ribbons. "We want to make the return home for these men and women who have fought so valiantly as easy and successful as possible," Kamenetz said.

Regarding Leonard Pitts' column about crime in a public housing project, I offer my own reasons why state government needs to focus on improving education and job training in devastated urban areas like Liberty Square ("What if this was your neighborhood?" Nov. 20). As a student of sociology at Elon University, I have studied the impact of education on incarceration rates. Sixty-seven percent of prisoners have not earned a high school diploma. Since education has been shown to significantly reduce the probability of incarceration, even slight improvements in educational achievement would produce a drop in crime and incarceration rates.

A long-neglected mansion on the city's west side has been restored to its 19th-century grandeur so that it can provide a home and hope for homeless women. Dozens of volunteers have adopted rooms in the 8,000-square-foot Victorian, built in 1893 by the owner of a Baltimore tugboat company. They swept away years of abandonment, sanded floors, painted walls, restored stained-glass windows, repaired fireplaces and polished the fixtures. They have rebuilt the kitchen, added new bathrooms and donated linens, handmade quilts and every stick of furniture — save for the few pieces that came with the house.

America is in crisis. The new normal is not good enough. The unemployed can't find jobs, the old can't retire and those in between live in constant fear of being tapped on the shoulder and thrust into the abyss. Property values are lower than a snake's belly, stocks are diving and gold - the "fear asset" - seems the only sound investment. Thursday, President Barack Obama will address Congress and is expected to propose ideas that only maintain the status quo, or perhaps even make things worse.

Often, the best ideas for a column come from readers. One reader recently objected to a column about Republicans vs. Democrats and said the real issue for voters is, instead, the people vs. elected officials of both parties. He wanted to throw all the rascals out. I think he failed to note that all of those rascal officials were chosen by the people not so long ago. All of our local officials, all of our Carroll County delegation and our representatives to Congress are Republicans.

Jo N. Booze, a retired private school educator who later worked for Episcopal Social Ministries, died June 13 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Broadmead retirement community resident was 79. The daughter of a Baltimore surgeon and a homemaker, Jo Nelson was born in Baltimore and spent her early years in Arbutus before moving with her family to a home on Fairway Drive in Towson. She was a 1950 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and earned a bachelor's degree in 1954 from Sweet Briar College.

THE CLINTON administration has put great emphasis on job training, as the cure for multiple ills.In its welfare reform, the administration hopes to train welfare recipients for jobs to lift them out of poverty. Mr. Clinton's trade policy promises training to re-educate U.S. workers displaced by low-wage foreign competition.Since the defeat of his economic stimulus package last spring, Mr. Clinton's employment policy generally has emphasized improving the supply of workers rather than increasing the demand for them.

ELDERSBURG -- Judy Young is a confident, self-assured young woman of 27 with soft blond hair, friendly blue eyes and ready smile.She's also a single mother of 7-year-old twin sons, and a bank teller at Farmers and Merchants Bank in Hampstead.Two years ago, Ms. Young was a struggling young mother whose relationship had gone sour and who had no place to live. But with the help of Human Services Programs and the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), the native West Virginian is putting her life back together.

Jo N. Booze, a retired private school educator who later worked for Episcopal Social Ministries, died June 13 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Broadmead retirement community resident was 79. The daughter of a surgeon and a homemaker, Jo Nelson was born in Baltimore and spent her early years in Arbutus before moving with her family to a home on Fairway Drive in Towson. She was a 1950 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and earned a bachelor's degree in 1954 from Sweet Briar College.

Cynthia MacKinnon says she is working at her dream job, thanks to training and encouragement she received at the Caroline Center in East Baltimore. The nonprofit center, run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a Roman Catholic religious order, celebrates its 15th anniversary Thursday with a salute to MacKinnon and others who acquired education and job skills within its walls. "We are flourishing," said Sister Patricia McLaughlin, the center's executive director. "Meeting all these wonderful women and watching them blossom has been a blessing to us. " More than 1,500 women have completed the center's employment readiness programs since it opened its doors on Somerset Street.