Yesterday, the Atlanta trip got the chance to serve alongside the Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency, or ACSS. The ACSS specializes in aiding people who are in the situation of being homeless be placed in careers. The director Gordon explained to us about how their “clients” come to them from shelters all over the city to join their program, which is a three week education program that teaches the clients how to build self confidence, a resume, how to dress for interviews, skills training, mock interviews, job placement, and even a career fair and graduation at the end of the three weeks. The clients are very selectively chosen by the organization, and had to meet certain qualifications to join.
Starting out, I worked to clean out the old documents in the computer lab, and then some light filing, but Gordon promised we would have the opportunity to work one-on-one with some of the clients and that’s what I was really looking forward too.
The first person I sat with needed help making an email address, and so I got to aid him in making a gmail account. He swore that he had no idea how to work computers and that there was no way he would be able to access it once he made it, but after sitting for a few minutes in frustration, he sent an email successfully, and practiced logging into the account until he was comfortable with it. It was so cool to see how quickly he picked it up, and to see his satisfaction in his success. It even surprised me that someone who had no experience with computers was able to learn so quickly.
The second person I was paired with had just come to the ACSS that day (a fact which I didn’t know until after I sat with him) and needed guidance on how to set up his resume in an appealing way, as well as a new email address. This man had never even TOUCHED a mouse before, and anyone who had aided him previously had typed his paperwork for him, which frustrated me because he was so bright and so willing to learn from the start. It was incredible how he went from not knowing how to use a mouse to typing words without looking at the keyboard in an HOUR. At one point, we were re-logging into his email to practice memorizing his username and password, and he got so frustrated he was having a hard time even typing and just lost all hope, but then we talked through it and I stepped away for a second to talk to the supervisor and was later told that the whole time I was gone, he was logging in and out of his email account over and over.
Before yesterday this man had only seen a computer, and he taught himself how to type AND open an email independently with under an hour of supervision. It only added to the craziness that he had joined the program that day, and had literally just been thrown into the programs rigourous environment hours beforehand. When we finished his resume, he gave me a hug and told me he was really excited about how his resume looked and wanted a bunch of copies so he could give them to people, and it was really bittersweet because he was so capable and had so many skills to offer the work force, but no one had sat with him and helped him develop his experience in a way that was beneficial him and that he understood.
The ACSS program also hires a professional resume writer to come in and help the clients, and I was informed that next week she would be coming into the classroom and that they would all get a brand new resume, so I am excited for the man I worked with to receive all of that information from a professional, since he seemed to soak up all of my very amateur, albeit well-intentioned advice.
The day held many learning experiences for me, and although I had served alongside the homeless population before, I still had pre-conceived notions of what I would encounter. What I found was a group of very highly-motivated, friendly people who we got the privilege of engaging with for the afternoon. My hope after serving with the ACSS is that their model of career placement is further developed in other places, based on it’s success rate (30 careers placed a month) as well as it’s ability to build the self esteem of so many capable individuals.
— Emily Cassimatis, Atlanta Participant 2016