The first full week of March is designated as Classified Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have more than 50 types of classified jobs. These are people who touch every corner of our agency’s work and the districts we support, from providing hands-on help to teachers, children and families, to filling endless behind-the-scenes roles to keep buildings and teams safe, cared for and high-functioning.
This Classified Employee Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting five of our more than 200 classified staff members and contractors, to provide a peek into the diverse ways this large group of employees lives our mission of service. We appreciate our entire classified team and the meaningful work they do.
Jennie Young is a career advisor with the C-TEC Youth Services program, a partnership between Clackamas ESD and Clackamas Community College funded by a federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) grant through Clackamas Workforce Partnership that supports 16-to-24-year-old youth experiencing barriers to employment or education.
Jennie helps students pursuing their GED or high school diploma get re-engaged in their education by listening to their unique challenges and connecting them to the resources they need to overcome those challenges and be successful. She has helped young people find shelter, locate food pantries, connect to mental health services and get access to technology.
Jennie began working with C-TEC Youth Services in 2008 doing data entry part-time. When someone left part-way through a grant program helping connect young people with employers to get their first work experiences, Jennie stepped in and fell in love with the work.
The “a-ha moments” are what motivate her.
“They’ll come in and say ‘I can’t get my GED or diploma. Jennie, I just can’t do this,’” Jennie explains. “And I’m like ‘okay, let’s just take it one step at a time, and look at things and break it down.’ And then all of a sudden it’s that switch of ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can.’ ‘Oh, look at what I’ve done!’ And then it’s a snowball effect. And I just love that. I love that switch.”
The work Jennie does with C-TEC Youth Services has become even more important during the pandemic, which has caused higher rates of homelessness, exacerbated hunger and mental health issues, and made access to technology critical to getting an education. Recently a young woman who had gotten COVID and was living in her car with her children reached out to Jennie for help. Jennie helped them find a place to live in rural Boring, but it needed to be connected to the internet so the young woman could participate in virtual GED classes. So Jennie also helped her navigate getting internet service to the home, and C-TEC Youth Services and Clackamas Community College paid the bill until she could get a job and pay for the service herself.
“Last week I got a call from somebody who had been in our program almost 10 years ago, and he just called to tell me how his life was going,” Jennie shares. “He was homeless, and now he has a job at OHSU and is taking classes at PSU. He said to me, ‘Jennie, now I am living my best life.’”
