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Job-training plan boosts
workers out of welfare

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Tess Malivao has tried to get a stable job after leaving the job market five years ago to raise a family of three.

"I applied all over," said Malivao, whose husband is a fisherman, "but there was a gap in my work experience ... The only answer I got was that 'I'll give you a call.' "

Tamara Keleimamahu had a child-care business, but found it hard to get clients who shied away when they found out she lived in Kalihi Valley Housing.

So now she's doing that only part-time while participating in a pilot program with the military designed to give on-the-job training to welfare recipients or subsidized housing residents.

Malivao and Keleimamahu are two of the five participants who this week began a collaborative retail job-training program which joined the nonprofit social welfare agency Parents and Children Together and the Defense Commissary Agency.

The five participants got 30 hours of basic job training skills from PACT, said Brian Ezuka, director of PACT's Economic Development Center.

They are now assigned to the Navy's commissary near Pearl Harbor, where they will spend two to three months working eight hours a day getting on-the-job training from regular commissary workers.

Participants in the pilot program are those currently on welfare or living in subsidized housing.

Lawrence Ahsan, a 1999 Farrington High School graduate, wants to spend the next couple of months working in the commissary's produce department to get enough experience to qualify for a regular paying job in a supermarket.

Dick Cook, who manages the island's six commissaries, said he started a similar job training program 13 years ago while managing the Navy's commissary at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the state of Washington.

"The program is still going on very strong today, said Cook, who now employs 1,200 people in Hawaii's commissary system.

"As we become successful here (at Pearl Harbor)," Cook added, "we hope to roll out the program to our five other stores. We want to give these people the training. We want to give them the tools they need to find a job."

Ezuka said "the goal of PACT's Economic Development Center is to provide opportunities for the under- and unemployed to improve their ability to find and keep gainful employment."

To do this, PACT proves core training in life skills; economic literacy including budget preparation, money management and other financial planning skills; and employment preparation, Ezuka said.

Besides the retail-training program, PACT is developing job-training with Alluvion Nursery and Coveralls of Hawaii, a private custodial company, Ezuka added.

"The idea is give these people a jump start," Ezuka said, "so it's just more than job training, but a program that will give them a skill."