NEWS RELEASE
April 10, 2006 

Community Workshops Sponsored by TANF
Wrangell Community Workshop - March 6-8, 2006

The Employment & Training/TANF sponsored a community workshop in Wrangell inviting participants from Kake, Petersburg, and Juneau. There were a total of 13 participants overall! The purpose of the workshop was to expose and assist participants to “Get Job Ready”. 

During the workshop participants wrote their own resumes and cover letters using laptop computers with assistance from TANF, ANTESSI and State staff.  In addition, they did mock interviews, and as time permitted they went over job and educational applications. 

Just so things didn’t seem too much like work, we sprinkled in some breaks, incentive drawings and inspirational speakers. 

Guest speakers included: DOLabor, Marty Miller; Higher Education, Leslie Isturis; Vocational Education, Ozzie Sheakley; TVR/Fast Forward, Teresa Grantham; Tribal Child Support, Ed Brakes; and Cheryl Sampson our Job Placement Specialist who did a tremendous job in her presentation, and in having all the appropriate documents for our participants.

One of our successful clients, Sasha Soboleff, talked about how he first succeeded in life and then later took a turn for the worse.  He told how he lost everything, but regained self-confidence and got back on his feet again due to TANF. 

In addition, Sharon Olsen, the Director of Employment and Training gave a welcoming, as did President Thomas. President Thomas gave a great presentation and hoped everyone would take advantage of what CCTHITA has to offer and encouraged them to ask questions of his staff.

At the end of the conference we awarded participants in different categories based on attendance, participation and their statement of their own self-sufficiency plan. We plan on continuing similar client workshops in various communities throughout the calendar year. We plan also to follow-up with clients who participated to determine successes of the workshop.

Sitka Community Workshop March 21-23, 2006

The Employment & Training (E&T) Division sponsored a community workshop in Sitka with the theme: “Let’s Get Job Ready: Ready-Set-Go”. This was the third community workshop created to maximize our informational outreach efforts to participants about the ever-changing job market in Southeast Alaska and was a collaborative effort with participants from Angoon, Craig and Klawock. 

The workshops brought CCTHITA/E&T programs and communities together to maximize resources and educational materials available for all Tribal citizens. They were intended to teach clients how to conduct job searches, complete job applications, write resumes and cover letters, perform appropriately in job interviews and follow-up after job interviews. This course presented a realistic understanding of the process and knowledge of the most effective tools to find a job. All participants created a Resume and were given a CD to take with them to update or change when needed. 

On behalf of Sharon Olsen, Director of Employment & Training, Dean George and Pamla Credo-Hayes of the TANF Program and Shari Paul, Workshop Coordinator, we would like to thank all participants, invited workshop presenters and guest speakers:

Sasha Soboleff, Speaker; Annette Ulmer, ANTESSI Program Director-Presenter; Melissa Cruise, State of Alaska/DOL-Presenter; Cheryl Sampson, ANTESSI-Presenter; Louise Kadinger, ANTESSI-Presenter; Bonnie Morris, TANF Program; Teresa Grantham, TVR Program-Presenter and Lee Bagoyo, and TANF Program-Worker.

We also would like to give a special thank you to President Thomas for his kind words of encouragement to participants and assisting with resume writing. 

Motivational Student Workshop Held

On February 20, 2006 Employment & Training (E&T) held a motivational student workshop at the Double Tree in Seattle, Washington. All of our Washington and Oregon students who are receiving assistance through E&T’s Training Services program attended the workshop.  Sharon Olsen, Director of Employment & Training, was the Master of Ceremonies. Other speakers included  Central Council Tlingit and Haida President Edward K. Thomas, Lisa Thomas, a prior student who now has a PhD in Psychology, and Gene Tagaban, a prior student training in Motivation. Each of them shared their school experiences with the students and talked to them about the importance of studying hard and staying in school. 

Because our students get homesick, we decided to bring a little of Alaska to them by inviting two Native dance groups to perform. Fred Fulmer led one dance group and Fred Lauth led the other. Gene Tagaban did a one man show on how his grandfather told him about Raven and him wanting to dance like the Raven; he showed us the Raven dance with his Raven dress. The students enjoyed the dance performances along with a few door prizes.

We have a lot of outside students who applied for Training Services through the mail and the conference gave them the opportunity to meet our staff in person and share techniques in solving problems, such as childcare, missing home and families, family and school schedules.  About 75% of our students are on the honor roll in different fields of study, including Nursing, Mechanical, Administration, Accounting and Piloting. 

The E&T staff stayed in Washington the remainder of the week and visited the college students and their administration. We received a lot of great information and insight from our students, who asked that we offer these workshops on an annual basis. They also asked the Program Compliance staff attend next time so they could update their enrollment information. Our staff brought back a lot of information and catalogs, which will be available in our library on the 3rd floor of the Andrew Hope Building.