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ACE in the Hole:
Chemeketa program guides food
stamp recipients to new careers

When someone pulls out an Oregon Trail card at the grocery store, most people immediately begin making assumptions about the character of the person holding the card.

Chemeketa Community College’s Chris Murfin knows that simply can’t be done.

When she arrived at the meeting, she let the others know of 23 openings at the plant. The 24th opening, she said, was going to be hers.

“We have people enrolled in the food stamp program who were making hundreds of thousands of dollars, former legislative aides and, of course, homeless people,” she said.

Murfin administers the Accelerated Community Employment (ACE) program for the college’s Workforce Integration Department. Participants in the state’s food stamp program are required to take part in an eight-week job search program; ACE is one of those programs.

On average, 150 to 200 new participants are enrolled in the ACE program each month and Murfin and her staff help secure placement in 30-50 jobs.

After an orientation and self-assessment, ACE participants attend weekly “job club” meetings. Each meeting focuses on a single topic relevant to the experience of job searchers.

“One week it will be how to dress for an interview, the next we’ll focus on resume and cover letter writing,” said Murfin.

A recurring topic for nearly every job club is how to answer the question, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

“For a lot of our participants, that becomes an obstacle to them applying for a job. We offer them ways to approach the answer based on feedback we’ve received from our business partners,” said Murfin.

When participants aren’t attending job club meetings they are required to keep logs of their job search activities and turn them in for review. ACE also provides a weekly $10 transportation voucher, in the form of either a gas card or bus pass, for participants to attend interviews and the next job club meeting.

If the participant is lucky enough to find a job early in the course of the program, the remainder of the transportation money in their “account,” up to $80, can be used to purchase work boots, clothes, or some other item required by a new employer.

When the program is at its best, the job club participants form their own job search networks.

At one recent meeting, a woman was late because she saw a help wanted sign in the window of a manufacturing plant and went in to find out more. When she arrived at the meeting, she let the others know of 23 openings at the plant. The 24th opening, she said, was going to be hers.

“We got about a dozen hires out of that one reference,” said Murfin.

For more information about the ACE program and others like it available to employers, visit http://www.work-life-success.biz/ on the Web.

Updated October 3, 2007 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.