Jones helps Karen McGilberry, a student in the Kitchen of Champions culinary training program, with a computer search.

By Jacqueline Gilvard Landry
Voice correspondent

Nicole Jones put her journalism career on hold after college graduation to join the Vincentian Service Corps. Now as a VSC volunteer with St. Vincent de Paul Society of Alameda County’s Champion Work Force jobs program, she’s helping jobless and homeless clients write new stories for themselves.

The 22-year-old DePaul University graduate is spending a year at SVdP in Oakland, teaching clients the skills they need to find and keep jobs.

Her favorite success story is of a client who recently graduated from Champion Work Force and found a full-time job in shipping and receiving with a Fremont company where he’s making $16 an hour and receiving full benefits. “This is incredible, given that he spent over a year sleeping in his car,” said Jones. “He now has a place of his own.”

Jones was seeking “real-world experience” when she signed on with VSC, a Catholic-affiliated volunteer organization that offers year-long jobs serving the poor and marginalized throughout the United States.

Paul Muli, a culinary student at the Kitchen of Champions, listens intently during one of the classes taught by Vincentian volunteer Nicole Jones.   Church-related groups offer volunteer options Numerous faith-based organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church offer volunteer opportunities for various lengths of service, both domestically and around the world. A sampling of these groups includes: Alliance for Catholic Education http://ace.nd.edu Augustinian Volunteers www.osavol.org Divine Word Missionaries www.svdmissions.org Dominican Volunteers http://dvusa.org Franciscan Covenant Program www.sbfranciscans.org ; www.franciscancovenantvolunteers.org Franciscan Workers of Junipero Serra — Companions of the Way www.dorothysplace.org Good Shepherd Volunteers www.gsvolunteers.org Incarnate Word Missionaries www.iwmissions.org Jesuit Volunteer Corps www.jesuitvolunteers.org Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest www.jvcnorthwest.org Lasallian Volunteers of The De La Salle Christian Brothers www.LasallianVolunteers.org Maryknoll Lay Missioners www.mklm.org Mercy Volunteer Corps www.mercyvolunteers.org Providence Volunteer Ministry www.P-V-M.org Victory Noll Missioner Program www.olvm.org/vnmissioner.html VIDES www.vides.us Vincentian Service Corps www.vincentianservicecorps.org For a more comprehensive list, see www.cnvs.org or www.catholicvolunteering.org/.

The 12-week Job Club course she’s teaching is mandatory for a group of “transitional employees” hired by St. Vincent de Paul to do maintenance, customer service and other jobs in its facilities. The jobs last three months, during which time they must search for permanent employment and try to “get out of whatever rut they’re in,” Jones said.

In addition to lectures, she assesses clients’ experience, helps create resumes, teaches computer skills and online job searches at SVdP’s computer lab, and conducts mock interviews. She meets weekly with the transitional employees to review their job search progress and helps them address employment hurdles, like addiction, lack of housing and criminal records.

One of her own hurdles is trying to teach “real-world experience” at the same time she’s gaining it. Her clients are mostly men in their late 20s to 40s with children. “I’m teaching a class on life experience, on soft communication skills, conflict resolution, things like this . . . when I only have 22 years of experience on this earth,” she said.

But even those with more life experience are “receptive and eager” to learn from her, Jones said. One man had been living in his car for several months when he showed up at Champion Work Force. Jones discovered he had “a ton of experience” in management and customer service, which she helped him reduce to a resume.

“He would take (the resume) into stores, and then would get discouraged if he didn’t get called back for an interview,” she said, “but sure enough he got a manager position at a shoe company.”

He was “a very determined person,” she said, “even after having a really hard night of sleeping in his car, or just trying to find something to eat or do his laundry and try to show up clean and presentable to his interview,” Jones said. “It’s really clients like him that make me want to keep doing this.”

There have been other success stories as well. One client was hired in December as a dish washer for Levy Restaurants at Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light and another is now working full-time at a SVdP thrift store.

“There are so many triumphant stories,” said Jones, who wants to pursue graduate work in journalism when her volunteer stint ends this summer. “I want to share those stories . . . not necessarily downtrodden, depressing stories of people not being able to find jobs or being evicted from their houses,” she said.

Vincentian Service Corps requires its volunteers to incorporate their faith into their service and their lives, and to live “simply” and in community with other volunteers. They receive a “very small” personal stipend.

Jones, who lives with five other VSC volunteers in San Francisco, is the only VSC volunteer in the East Bay. The roommates share faith-based activities like weekly “community night,” where they discuss spiritual or social justice issues. Jones, who was raised Catholic, said the volunteer experience has helped lead her back to attending Mass and taking Confirmation classes. “I felt really called to continue my journey in the tradition,” she said.

VSC accepts volunteers of any faith, aged 20-plus without dependents. The corps considers applicants’ job and location preferences, but ultimately decides their placements with final approval of the agency where they will work. Jones asked to work with homeless clients in the Bay Area and loves her SVdP assignment.

Other domestic and international faith-based groups also have volunteers in the Bay Area. Joe Balbier with Jesuit Volunteer Corps also works at SVdP. These volunteers “add great value to non-profits like ours who are overwhelmed with an increase in demand for services,” said SVdP’s executive director Philip Arca.

Not only does the agency get a well-screened, skilled group of young people, but “they bring a compassion and desire to serve others,” he said. Usually, there are two or three VSC and JVC volunteers there each year.

Jones remains inspired by her clients’ overwhelming determination to succeed. “I tell them by coming here every single week, you are making your own luck,” she said. “You’re showing that you want to change and you want something better for yourself and your family.”

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