Snohomish County News
Dance raises money for club
Doug Ramsay photo
Norma Gutierrea and Christian Benavides, both of Lake Stevens, perform a traditional Mexican dance at a benefit dinner Feb. 14 in Monroe. More than 50 people attended the event, which featured dance performances to raise money to purchase items to make outfits for students in the Frank Wagner Elementary School dancing club. Twenty-four Monroe School District students from kindergarten to fifth grade participate in the club that meets Tuesday nights. Gutierrea, who teaches the club, focuses on Mexican folk dancing from the Diamantes de Jalisco region of Mexico. The students, who have been learning the dances since October, will perform April 30 at the school’s carnival and again at a school assembly May 7. The club is open to all Monroe School District students kindergarten to fifth grade.
Groups join to help the jobless
EVERETT - Next month marks an unhappy anniversary for Lonzo Wilson — a year since he was laid off from a job doing warehouse and janitorial work.
Wilson has been looking for work ever since, but he says it is “very hard” to find job openings. “I am willing to do anything,” Wilson said. “I can’t be picky when the economy is like this.”
Last week, Wilson turned to the Helping Hands for Hard Times economic resource fair, a series of countywide events aimed at giving residents the tools they need to find jobs.
“I’m here all day,” Wilson said during the first event, a resource fair at Comcast Arena in Everett. “I’m here for the long haul.”
Helping Hands for Hard Times started 10 years ago as a collaboration among the county, United Way of Snohomish County and the Workforce Development Council, but as a plummeting economy led to sustained job losses, collaborators decided they needed more than a Web site to help struggling residents.
In November, County Executive Aaron Reardon had the idea to hold an expo, giving jobless residents the chance to talk one-on-one with advocacy groups, such as Volunteers of America. Three months later, the three-day countywide resource fair launched.
“It is just a great example of a lot of organizations coming together and doing the right thing for people going through a tough time,” said Carl Zapora, president and CEO of United Way. “Hopefully, people attending this event can find help here or talk to someone who can get them to the right people.”
The resource fairs helped about 500 people find tips and tools for their job search as well as to put them in touch with the human services they qualify for while facing unemployment or even homelessness.
Most of the residents asking local nonprofit agencies for help are experiencing homelessness for the first time after a major event, such as losing a job or a divorce, said Frank Pelayo, housing intake specialist for Volunteers of America. That’s different than a year ago, when Pelayo’s clients were chronically homeless or unemployed — not former Boeing employees or people with graduate degrees, as he is seeing now.
“It’s a whole different demographic than 12 months ago,” he said.
Pelayo works to provide 90-day temporary shelter and two-year affordable housing to homeless residents, but his clients sometimes have to wait for over a year for assistance.
“There aren’t enough 90-day shelters in the county,” Pelayo said. “People are having to sleep in their cars. The county did not anticipate this level of need. They didn’t anticipate the economy tanking to this extent.”
If there is a “silver lining in the cloud” to the recession, Pelayo says it’s the way local advocacy groups have banded together to help those in need. Limited resources and grant funding have usually meant nonprofits had to compete to stay in business.
“Normally, groups have been territorial, but the spirit has changed based on the need,” he said. “We are pretty well integrated. If people make a phone call with us, we’re going to make it count.”
That collaboration was evident at the Helping Hands resource fair, where advocacy groups pooled their resources to give residents tools to find a job.
Volunteers of America provided attendees with free voicemail boxes so they could apply for jobs even if they didn’t have a permanent residence. Snohomish Health District gave out H1N1 vaccines on the spot so unemployed residents wouldn’t have to miss interviews for being ill.
Local groups also held workshops, such as a workshop on how to find a job using library resources held by the Sno-Isle Libraries.
All the booths and workshops at the resource fair were designed to help people “get on their feet,” Pelayo said.
“They should do this more,” said Richard Arnett who came to the resource fair from Island County. Arnett has been struggling to find a job since he stopped working construction on Seattle’s Hard Rock Cafe. “There is no work out there right now.”
To access resources in Snohomish County, call 211.
By LINDSAY TOLER
Published Feb. 17, 2010