EAST GARFIELD PARK — For years, Michael Pernell has worked mostly minimum wage jobs. His most recent one: a fast food worker.
Now the 40-year-old man has a higher paying job as a skilled wood craftsman, thanks to a West Side non-profit job training agency.
“This is a new beginning for me,” Pernell said.
Pernell is one of 8,300 low-income Chicago-area residents who found jobs with help from the Greater West Town Community Development Project in East Garfield Park.
Aside from wood craft training, the organization also provides classes in shipping and receiving.
The non-profit group started in 1989 with job placement services. By 1992, the organization also started providing job training skills to people.
It also has a high school that targets dropouts, West Town Academy.
The school, which has 150 students, opened in 1998. It is next to Greater West Town’s 53,000-square-foot facility at 500 N. Sacramento Blvd.
While Greater West Town receives private donations, it operates from mostly government funds. It has a $4 million budget.
Greater West Town targets unemployed or underemployed Chicago-area disadvantaged residents like Pernell.
“We are expanding employment opportunities for people who weren’t getting them,” said William Leary, the organization’s founder.
About 87 percent of its participants get jobs.
In June, the organization recognized many of the firms that have hired its trainees at a luncheon at the Garfield Park Conservatory.
Many of the firms have repeatedly hired the program’s trainees.
Kim Ruzkowski, owner of Georgia Nut Co., a candy store in Skokie, said her firm has hired 40 employees.
“We had a lot of great workers,” Ruzkowski said. “They are motivated. Their outlook on life is that they have been given a second chance. They tend to work hard as well.”
Heather Egan, of Rickard Circular and Folding, agreed.
“I don’t go anywhere else but to Greater West Town,” said Egan, who has hired a handful of workers from the program and sits on the organization's board. “They know what they are doing. We know they are drug free. They get to work on time.”
Pernell will earn $12 an hour as a custom molder for Rayner & Rinn-Scott Inc. He participated in the organization’s 15-week job-training program to learn wood-working skills, and was one of the first workers hired by the firm.
The single father of a 9-year-old daughter said the new job will allow him to move out of his father’s
South Side home and into a place of his own.
Greater West Town "is a good place you can go for help,” Pernell said. “The staff is really supportive.”
For more information about Greater West Town, call 312-563-9028.
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