Opportunity Junction

Shaunette Buchanan: "Thanks to Opportunity Junction, I can provide for my kids and give them the attention they deserve."

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Chevron Presents the 2012 Imagine Gala: Reveal Your True Promise, April 28

Don your favorite mask, be it funny, funky or sophisticated to celebrate the discovering of who we are! Join us for Opportunity Junction's Gala fundraiser with a masquerade theme. Please save the date and look forward to a fabulous event April 28, 6 pm at the Diablo Country Club:

• Presented by Chevron
• With auctioneer Damon Casatico of Charity Benefit Auctions
• Located at the stunning Diablo Country Club
• Drawing on the creativity and inspiration of Events Committee members Carol Altwarg, Kathy Leahy, Selma Moore, Mary Ann Shattuck, Trish Shattuck, and Betty Stokes, and
• Staffed by Brianna Burkman, Development Manager, and her team of Opportunity Junction interns and alumni.

Please contact Brianna Burkman, Development Manager, for more information.

We are accepting auction donation items and can even accommodate early ticket sales. Thanks to all who have supported us in so many ways through the years.

Our sponsorship drive is well under way. Can you join Chevron and these organizations that have already signed up as sponsors? The Sponsorship Invitation is available on our website.

Presenting Sponsor:

Platinum Sponsor:	Gold Sponsors:
Media Sponsors:
Silver Sponsors:Cosmetic Dental SpaDow Chemical GenOn TechProse	Bronze Sponsors: John Muir Health Umpqua Bank USS-POSCO

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Rich Berger, our new Business Services Manager, Can Help with your Staffing Needs

Opportunity Junction would like to welcome Rich Berger, our new Business Services Manager. This newly developed position is charged with developing and maintaining employer relationships, increasing our pipeline of placements, and generating Staffing Services income, expanding on last year's successful employer outreach efforts. Placements made through employer outreach averaged wages that were higher by almost $2 an hour than ones in which Opportunity Junction did not have a direct connection with the employer.

Rich is responsible for strengthening existing relationships with our hiring partners and developing new ones. With over ten years of business and banking experience, Rich joins our team from the "for profit" world, ready to utilize his networking and relationship building skills. As a former Vice President with Wells Fargo, he is uniquely familiar with Contra Costa businesses and the current economic climate. Rich is looking forward to utilizing his business experience and skill set to make a positive impact at Opportunity Junction and is eager to help our graduates find permanent employment.

With a hectic holiday season upon us, Staffing Services saves you time and money by:

• Charging only $16 an hour for temporary staffing assignments and charging no fee for direct hires;
• Helping to cover staff vacations and one-off special projects;
• Placing highly skills administrative professionals for positions such as Receptionist/Front Desk Coordinator, Executive/Administrative Assistant, and Project Assistant;
• Filtering candidates for your positions, selecting those with matching qualifications and who will make us proud; and
• Working with you on a continuing basis and incorporating your feedback into our training

To learn more, contact Rich Berger.

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Join Us for December Graduation at the El Campanil

Class 36 of Opportunity Junction's Job Training and Placement Program will celebrate graduation from Phase I of the program on December 22 at 7:00 pm at the beautiful El Campanil Theatre located at 602 W. 2nd Street in downtown Antioch.

Please join us to celebrate Class 36's successful completion of the intensive twelve week training for administrative careers. "This program has meant so much to me. It's my last chance to really make a success of myself. The program here is so practical and realistic. It prepares the trainee for the 'real' workforce," says trainee Betti Schaffer.

Trainee Jinet Ventura adds, "I would like to thank Opportunity Junction and its delightful staff for being the translucent light at the end of the tunnel. There will never be enough words to express how thankful we are."

But graduation doesn't mean a goodbye in the Job Training and Placement Program: Class 36 begins their paid internships in January. While the new graduates look for full-time employment, they are ready to help local business with temporary staffing needs as part of our Staffing Services program. Please contact Rich Berger for more information.

Application sessions for the next class of the Job Training and Placement Program will begin January 9, 2012 for the February training class.

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Public/Private Ventures' Benchmarking Project Lets Us Compare Results

If we didn't believe we were doing a great job getting clients started on careers leading to self-sufficiency, we wouldn't be here. We get great feedback from program participants (100% satisfaction), and we know the families behind our published success stories. But how do we know how well we're doing, compared with other job training providers? How would we know if we needed to make improvements?

Public/Private Ventures is a national nonprofit research organization that works to improve the lives of children, youth and families in high-poverty communities by making social programs more effective. They recognized the need that workforce development programs have for tools to evaluate and improve their results. The result: the Benchmarking Project.

Opportunity Junction and about 300 other programs across the country have anonymously contributed data to the project. Programs are classified by more than a dozen qualities - percentage of aid recipients, availability of work experience as part of the program, size of program, and so forth. Each organization can then compare their own placement and retention numbers to those of similar organizations or programs.

The Benchmarking Project also requires participants to define what a placement and retention. It's not as simple as it sounds. For placements, for example, jobs can be permanent or temporary, part-time or full-time, and with or without benefits. Indeed, after seeing that some peers defined placements more loosely than we did, we made the decision to report on a broader range of placements. We still preserve all the data describing the terms of employment - we can calculate that the average number of hours per week for last year's placements was 34, for example - but some of the placements in our overall 90% rate are part-time and a small percentage are in temporary positions. We think we'd look even better, in comparison to our peers, if we excluded purely temporary positions.

Of course, just because we beat the medians for comparison programs and organizations doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement. We're running a study of our own right now, comparing participants we choose for the Job Training and Placement Program with those we turn down. The groups aren't precisely comparable, but we hope to learn some valuable lessons about the difference it makes when you invest in a motivated job-seeker who is facing barriers to employment.

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Thank you, Supervisor Glover!

Thanks to the generosity of District V Supervisor Federal Glover and Calpine Corporation, Thanksgiving will be a little better for 25 participants and alumni of our Job Training and Placement Program. For the fourth year in a row, the Supervisor's office in partnership with Calpine Corporation spread holiday cheer by delivering plump, delicious turkeys for distribution to program participants.

"My family is so thankful for the turkey donation. Preparing a delicious family meal will be that much easier this year, and my children will love it!" says Trainee Asha Davis.

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Alumni News

Friday, December 9 Alumni Holiday Party: Take a break from your kids and the holiday bustle! Come join other Opportunity Junction/OPTIC alumni, staff, and current participants for our annual Holiday Get-Together from 6-8:30 pm.

Gifts for you and your kids will be available, but you must RSVP to Lorena by telephone at (925) 776-1133 and be present at the event to collect them.

Congratulations on the following new positions: Shonta Murry, Class 30, File Clerk; Eileen Gundayao, Class 31, Clerical Assistant with AD Seeno Construction; Andrea Okeson, Class 32, Instructional Aid with Contra Costa Arc; Felicia Lopez, Class 33, Medical Records Clerk; Sarah Gwaltney, Class 34, Train Operator with BART; Deja Allison, Class 35, Agency Clerk; Zhoquandas Brown, Class 35, Data Entry with Recall Corporation; Arman Cornejo, Class 35, Seasonal Crew; Clarina Martinez, Class 35, Intermediate Typist Clerk; Lyle Chambers, Class 36, Property Manager with Satellite Housing.

Keep Us Posted: Alumni, please fill out an online update here if you've not already done so. The survey takes 5 minutes, and your responses will be confidential. Your reporting creates opportunities for others. Thanks for your help!

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New Grants and Support for our Programs

We are proud and grateful to announce the following new grants and funding partnerships:

• AT&T: AT&T has issued a grant to support our evening Technology Center, which bridges the digital divide by offering low-income adults free classes in computer application, as well as general access to computers and the Internet. AT&T made its first grant to support Opportunity Junction back when we were called OPTIC, enabling us to purchase the computers we needed to run and teach Microsoft Office.
• Chevron: Chevron has issued a grant to support our increased job training capacity and career development services and will serve a third year as our Technology Sponsor. Opportunity Junction is a part of Chevron's California Partnership, an initiative to invest in education and economic development in Chevron's home state of California.
• The Dow Chemical Company: We have been awarded a Dow Promise grant for our Backbone for Community Development initiative, upgrading facilities that all of our training programs use. Dow Promise is an employee-led initiative of The Dow Chemical Company with a mission to positively impact African American communities that face education and economic challenges.
• Anonymous Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation: The Anonymous Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation has issued a grant core operating support. The Anonymous Fund has been a valued partner in our organizational capacity-building initiatives as well as in ensuring that our programs effectively serve low-income adults in Eastern Contra Costa County.
• The Dean and Margaret Lesher Foundation: We are entering the second year of The Lesher Foundation's two-year grant to Opportunity Junction for general operating support. The Foundation has supported Opportunity Junction since June of 2000, shortly after the organization's founding and the launch of our flagship Job Training and Placement Program. The Lesher Foundation provides grants to nonprofits in Contra Costa County to support education, the arts, and children & families.
• San Francisco Foundation: The San Francisco Foundation has included us for a second year in its three-year Job Creation and Training Program. This grant is part of the Foundation's 2011 Priority Funding in response to the recession and its collateral effects. The Foundation's Priority Funding focuses on strengthening the safety net, investing in job training and creation, and foreclosure prevention and neighborhood recovery in order to support those who have been hardest hit by the recession.
• The Y&H Soda Foundation: The Y & H Soda Foundation has made a two-year grant as continuing support for our initiatives to increase wage levels for participants in the Job Training and Placement Program -- employer outreach and Microsoft Office Specialist certification. The Y & H Soda Foundation supports nonprofit and Catholic organizations committed to the well-being of the underserved in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

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Newsletter Contributors: Brianna Burkman and Alissa Friedman.

copyright © 2011, Opportunity Junction

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