Encore Career Network Connects Mature Professionals with Opportunity
Cleveland, OH (PRWEB) January 11, 2016 -- “A career is a terrible thing to waste,” says Joseph Rochford. Rochford recently retired in 2014 when he made the decision to move from Stark County to Cleveland to be closer to his family.
Similar to many recent retirees, he was faced with the question: “what’s next?” Rochford says, “As both a new retiree and resident of Cleveland, I was faced with the dilemma last summer of what to do with a lifetime of experience in education and non-profit agencies. Not wanting to seek full-time employment again, I found that there were very few part-time jobs that would allow me to use the skills and experience I had gained through nearly 50 years in the workforce. Then I found the Encore Career Network.”
The Encore Career Network, a new division of Mature Services, draws upon the expertise, passion and talents that individuals (ages 50+) have gained over their career to assist non-profit and government agencies. The program is part of the Cleveland Foundation’s Encore Cleveland initiative which seeks to channel the time, energy and talents of experienced Clevelanders into solving community challenges and filling unmet needs.
Encore Career Network is designed to deliver new sources of talent to social purpose organizations through paid part-time positions. The program is designed to create a pathway to connect individuals with opportunities at organizations that have current staffing needs or other organizational gaps they haven’t been able to fill or execute due to limited resources. Individuals will fill capacity building needs in areas such as finance, human resources, marketing, grant writing, or provide direct services in areas such as tutoring, mentoring or other intergenerational programming.
As a participant in the Encore Career Network, Rochford hit the ground running. Working with the Cleveland Department of Aging he became Focus Group Facilitator for their initiative, Age Friendly Cleveland. Reflecting on his experience he says, “While I gave of my skills, I learned as much as I gave. The seniors not only told me a lot about their neighborhoods, but also about what their lives were like. I came away realizing that this city has a tremendous resource in its senior citizens.”
Almost simultaneously he started a position at the Literacy Cooperative doing program research and evaluation. This opportunity has taken him back to his “first career” working in the education field, where he retired as the Vice President of the Stark Education Partnership.
“These are both excellent opportunities where I can work part-time while giving back to the community in a meaningful way,” says Rochford.
For more information on Mature Services and the programs they offer, visit http://www.matureservices.org.
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If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Melanie Collins at 216-361-9750, email her at mcollins(at)matureservices.org, or visit the Mature Services website, http://www.matureservices.org
Summer Lee, Mature Services, Inc., http://www.matureservices.org, +1 330-253-4597 Ext: 193, [email protected]
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