'Job Club' Helps Job-Seekers in RI

To say Stephen Colella likes to help people would be an understatement. He has a heart for helping people and it is something that he has always felt called to do.

While a full-time vocational rehabilitation counselor at the University of Massachusetts last year, he decided to spend his evenings starting and running a program he calls Job Club RI at West Warwick Public Library to teach job search skills to the unemployed and the underemployed in the area.

“When the economy first started to go down in early 2009, my first thought was to offer a support group, but I didn’t want it to be a pity party," Colella said. "Rather, I wanted people to acknowledge the loss and talk about how it feels to have lost a job or be unable to find another job. You begin to lose a lot of self-worth, dignity, respect after not hearing back from potential employers for so long. You can see it in their body language and the way people walk in on the first day. After I get them to share about their loss, I want to spend the rest of the time in a constructive way.”

Mostly, he wants to teach people job search skills — resume and cover letter writing, interviewing skills, telephone techniques and networking, among other skills. Rather than lecturing people and always talking at them, he wants the program to be more of a workshop environment, a time to talk back and forth.

“There are many programs for the chronically unemployed and those who make $20,000 or less, but right now most of the unemployed in the middle class don’t qualify for unemployment programs or government help because they make too much money or they own assets such as houses and cars," Colella said. “Most of these people have good work skills and, through no fault of their own, have lost a job.”

Colella said the average club member has been unemployed for 77 weeks, and he tells people who join the program that all he wants is for them to treat their job search as if it is their full-time job.

Since its beginning in October 2009, Colella’s job club has put 102 people through the six-week program, and 39 of those people have gotten jobs at an average wage of $14.50 an hour. Twenty-four people have gone to retraining to learn a more marketable skill.

With no funding and no fees from participants, Colella is volunteering all of his services and time to help the program participants find a well-paying job.

He started the program with no intention of becoming a non-profit organization, but because of the media attention he has received from the New York Times, Huffington Post and NPR, he hopes to become a non-profit by the end of 2011 and begin applying for grants and seeking donations to fund and expand the program. He said even if he doesn’t receive funding, he will continue running the program.

“I’m truly humbled by all the attention Job Club RI has gotten,” Colella said. “I’m only as good as the people I’m helping.”

Several of his past program participants have donated services, including designing a website and logo, to help Colella grow the program and market it to even more people.

“They are recognizing the good that I am doing and they are giving back to me,” Colella said.

Colella's Job Club RI meets on Monday nights at the West Warwick Library and is set to begin another six week program in September. To find out more about Job Club RI visit www.jobclubri.com or email steveco20@aol.com.