Building Trust, Serving Community: The JobUp
“Thank you so much for everything,” participants have said of The JobUp. Or, “We will miss you!” Or “This was so helpful.”
This summer, in lieu of a traditional internship, I have been learning about how to help immigrants in my community of practice integrate into American society. They are Turks who had accomplished careers in their country in fields like management, medicine or engineering, or went to college there. In the U.S., they either are unemployed or make a living as drivers, cooks, waiters and the like.
Months ago I connected with several of them here in New York, where immigrant malemployment — a national, structural problem of skill-mismatch among non-natives — affects one in four newcomers educated abroad. The total is 212,000 people, according to the State of the Workforce 2018, published by The New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals.
I cover immigrant malemployment. See some of my recent articles here and here.
To interact more closely and regularly with the Turkish transplants I met, I came up with the idea of offering weekly, dual-track workshops to deliver instruction in both English as a second language (ESL) and job-readiness. I called them The JobUp. The project is part of my practicum at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where I’m pursuing a master’s in social journalism.
The Turkish Cultural Center in Brooklyn helped me spread the word, and in less than two weeks I had a small but committed group of six adults. On my end, I recruited a talented ESL teacher, Joye Dawkins, who has a fine grasp of both cross-cultural and workplace dynamics. On June 22, we headed to Sheepshead Bay, where many people in my community live, and launched The JobUp. Since our participants have a beginning-level proficiency of the English language, we designed a curriculum to teach them the basics of U.S. workplace culture, vocabulary and expressions.
“Thank you so much for everything,” participants have said of The JobUp. Or, “We will miss you!” Or “This was so helpful.”
While I wasn’t sure yet whether having a smaller or a larger group would be better for the pilot project, this is what I have observed.
Smaller is better
Especially when launching a people-centric program like The JobUp, a small class is preferable. It has allowed us to have more individual time with participants and to hone both the message and the method. Students have enjoyed a more focused and dedicated environment.
As it turns out, this approach takes a page from a new marketing style called Lifecycle, “centered on earning and building trust,” writes Julia McCoy in Why 2019 Marketing Will be About Lifecycles, Not Sales Funnels. People in the engagement field have been borrowing the strategy to foster more meaningful relationships with their communities.
Reading that was an important piece of validation. Building trust takes time and persistence. Especially with people who have left their country because of persecution, political turmoil or other traumatic circumstances. Hundreds of Turkish families emigrated to New York after an attempted military coup destabilized their country in 2016. Many are in my community.
In the case of The JobUp, I also wanted to create value. Soon, I began looking for clues. They came on July 6.
That week we began talking about the resume and its crucial role for U.S. job seekers. Faced with the challenge of preparing one and battling feelings of inadequacy, a student posted a comment on the class’ WhatsApp thread: “I don’t want to work in the U.S.” Joye and I took it in stride and replied that regardless of career goals, writing a resume would be good practice.
On Saturday, when the student came to The JobUp, not only had she decided to start her resume but told us, “I want to be a child psychologist in this country.” It felt really good!
The Big Value of Small Things
Joye and I pondered an important question: What could we do to make our students feel welcomed and appreciated. After all, they have busy lives, and we want them to keep coming. Being a good ESL teacher, she suggested acknowledging their native culture with visual references.
I liked the idea and we started taping a small image of the Turkish flag on the upper righthand corner of the whiteboard at every class. We also decided to write, “Mehraba!” which mean “hello!” in Turkish. Both visuals stay until we leave.
Similarly, when I take photos and short videos to document The JobUp and promote the fall registration — I’m recruiting! — I alert my students and remind them why I’m doing it. Often, I also show them the images (sometimes they make us laugh) and share some of them in our WhatsApp group. They feel included and express appreciation.
It wasn’t until recently, though, after I read Measuring Your Member’s Sense of Community, an article published by CMX and featured by Gather, the engagement newsletter, that I realized how spot-on our methods are!
“Symbols and rituals matter when building community,” writes the author, Elijah van der Geissen. “Fly your flag! Celebrate your jargon! Take what’s unique about your community and lean into it. What are the natural symbols for your community?”
My first thought was, “Wow, we’re on track.”
Read my other piece about The JobUp.
