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Low-income seniors living at B’nai B’rith’s Homecrest House in Silver Spring, Md. will benefit from a new grant designed to provide the elderly with part time jobs to build their resumes and maintain independence.
The grant, from Senior Service America to The Jewish Council for the Aging of Greater Washington, is good for $768,784 and will fund programs for more than 40 nonprofits and government agencies.
Read more about the grant, courtesy of an article in Gazette.net:
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The money will be used to help provide older workers in Montgomery and Frederick counties with temporary part-time jobs to help them expand their resumes.
The grant will fund a program that has been operating for 40 years, said David Gamse, CEO of the Jewish Council for the Aging of Greater Washington.
Older people face longer periods of unemployment, and age discrimination is “alive and well and living in Montgomery and Frederick counties,” he said.
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To be eligible, participants must be at least 55 years old and earn less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level.
The program has a long waiting list, with about 300 people for the 30 to 60 new slots that open up each year, said Rivka Yerushalmi, director of senior employment services for the council.
The average wait is a few years, she said, but there are priorities for people such as veterans, people with disabilities, those who are 75 years of age or older, and people who have received eviction notices, she said.
Many of the people in the program may have poor language skills or don’t know how to communicate effectively in the modern workplace, but many are well-educated and speak multiple languages, Gamse said.
Everyone in the program is trying very hard to get off government support programs and wants to be independent, he said.
Between 2006 and 2012, the program moved 118 participants into unsubsidized full- and part-time jobs.
“The bottom line here is that we want these folks out of the program and into regular jobs,” Gamse said.
