San Mateo parishes form jobs net
When a group of Peninsula parishes started a job support network for their unemployed neighbors, they didn’t think they’d be working with their neighbors’ children, too.
The volunteer network opened for business in January and received plenty of response from people left jobless by the economic downturn. But for many of those clients, their own unemployment wasn’t the only worry.
“A lot of those people have college-age children” and we’re seeing them move back home after graduation, depressed and discouraged because they couldn’t find work, said Deborah Mosunich, a volunteer from St. Gregory Parish in San Mateo.
With unemployment running at12.5 percent statewide and even higher for those under 25, the same thing was being seen in parishes across San Mateo County, said Msgr. Robert McElroy, pastor of St. Gregory.
“It became clear that many people out of college were having great difficulty finding work,” he said. “There was a whole set of new challenges they were facing.”
This isn’t news to college guidance counselors, who have been working overtime to help their young charges deal with the new realities brought by the tough economic times.
“Students are really concerned,” said Carrie McKnight, director of career services at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. “There’s a lot of anxiety around the campus with seniors.”
For those college students, who grew up in economic boom times, it was never supposed to be like this. College graduation was supposed to be another step toward a new and even better life.
“Their whole life since maybe fourth grade has been straightforward: if you do A and do B then you get C,” said Alex Hochman, assistant director of the career services center at the University of San Francisco.
“So they were convinced that if they write a perfect resume, they’d automatically get a job,” he said. “But now they’re finding that A plus B doesn’t always equal C.”
But it’s one thing to identify a problem and another to actually do something about it, as the job network quickly discovered.
The same job skills training, interview instruction and resume building efforts that worked so well with older job seekers unemployed for the first time in years didn’t strike a spark with young people who were suddenly out of school and out of work. When only a handful of the under-25s turned out for an opening workshop, it was back to the drawing board.
“We’re feeling around now,” Mosunich said. “We think there’s a need (for job assistance), but the question is how to reach out to the young people who need it.”
The problem could be more with the messengers than the message, she admitted.
“With parents involved, improving job skills becomes just one more thing your mom is trying to make you do,” Mosunich said.
But it also could be that the growing on-line world of social networking isn’t serving young college grads well in the current jobs marketplace.
“Kids are so technology-oriented today many of them are convinced that all they need to get a job is their computer and a Blackberry,” said Mosunich, whose career has been in the retail industry. “But you still get jobs from contacts, not from job boards.”
Those personal contacts are so important that Hochman tells students at USF that they need to get out and make themselves seen off-campus by potential employers at least three times a week.
“I tell them they have to be aggressive,” he said. “If they just use the school system, that’s probably not enough in this economy.”
But what too many people, young and old, fail to realize is that their Catholic parishes can be another of those places to get out and make the contacts that can lead to work, Mosunich said.
“The person you talk to might not have a job to offer, but he may know someone who does,” she said.
In the days of the immigrant church, the local Catholic parish was a one-stop shop for any new arrival. With the help of the priest and parishioners, a newcomer could get help finding a job and a place to live, as well as becoming an instant part of a community of fellow believers.
That’s not the way modern Catholics always see their parishes today, which is a shame, Msgr. McElroy said.
“There’s nothing new with parishes being involved in finding jobs for their members and other similar secular concerns,” he said. “There’s a strong sense of community, with people eager to help.”
That help extends to the young people who are an essential part of those parish communities, both now and in the future.
The slow start of that job program for young people doesn’t worry Msgr. McElroy or the volunteers for that growing job network the mid-Peninsula parishes are sponsoring. It’s an effort they are convinced will bear fruit.
“We have to fine tune the program to get those young people involved,” he said. “But we will.”
For more information, e-mail jobs@stgregs-sanmateo.org.
By John Wildermuth
From April 16, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
