Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees Webinar Transcript 1 | Page Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees Webinar Transcript MAY 30, 2013 Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. During the question and answer session, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. Today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. And now I would like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Louisa Jones. Thank you. Louisa Jones: Good afternoon everyone or good morning depending on where you are. Before we get started I just wanted to let everyone know that the question and answers, you can actually submit any questions throughout the entire Webinar online using the Webinar platform. As you can see with this screen, you can actually go up to the Q&A tab at the top and then type in your questions and then it will actually be submitted to the team in the room. And then we’ll actually make sure it gets put into the queue for answering. We may or may not be able to get to all questions but we will make sure that those questions get on to our speakers to get some answers back to you at some point. And at this point, I would like to turn this over to Kenneth Tota, Deputy Director, Office of Refugee Resettlement. Kenneth Tota: Thank you Louisa. Hello everyone and welcome to the Office of Refugee Resettlement Webinar: Using Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees.
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Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees
Webinar Transcript
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Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce
Development Skills for Refugees Webinar Transcript
MAY 30, 2013
Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen-only
mode. During the question and answer session, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. Today’s
conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. And now I
would like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Louisa Jones. Thank you.
Louisa Jones: Good afternoon everyone or good morning depending on where you are. Before we get
started I just wanted to let everyone know that the question and answers, you can actually submit any
questions throughout the entire Webinar online using the Webinar platform.
As you can see with this screen, you can actually go up to the Q&A tab at the top and then type in your
questions and then it will actually be submitted to the team in the room. And then we’ll actually make
sure it gets put into the queue for answering.
We may or may not be able to get to all questions but we will make sure that those questions get on to
our speakers to get some answers back to you at some point. And at this point, I would like to turn this
over to Kenneth Tota, Deputy Director, Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Kenneth Tota: Thank you Louisa. Hello everyone and welcome to the Office of Refugee Resettlement
Webinar: Using Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees.
Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees
Webinar Transcript
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My name is Ken Tota. I am the Deputy Director at the Office of Refugee Resettlement. This Webinar is
sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and
Families, Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Throughout the Webinar, you may submit questions virtually using the Q&A submission form on the
Webinar platform and we will be ensuring the Power Point transcript and audio files from the Webinar,
will be made available in the upcoming weeks on our ORR Web site.
ORR has, for the past few years, really focused on building relationships with ACF programs and other
federal departments to help leverage support and services for refugees to ensure a successful path to
self-sufficiency.
One focus has been to build stronger relationships with the Office of Family Assistance and the
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs as we note that approximately half of all
refugee arrivals actually may access TANF for a period after arrival.
We have worked closely with OFA, the OFA director and staff and have presented at several Regional
TANF conferences to facilitate greater collaboration and information sharing.
Over time, we realized how important a greater outreach is to our mainstream service providers serving
refugees and recently awarded ITF TA grant to help us have broader outreach with TANF programs.
We hope that this collaboration will be very helpful in sharing best practices and today we are - with this
Webinar, we are very pleased to provide an overview of Vocational English as a Second Language
Immersion Program, known as VIP, in San Francisco, California.
The VIP program is a collaboration between the San Francisco Human Services Agency, HSA, Arriba
Juntos, and the City College of San Francisco. The VIP program is an 18-week intensive English language
immersion program that focuses on teaching the vocabulary and the cultural norms of the workplace.
I am joined today on the Webinar by Lynn Levey from the San Francisco Human Services Agency. Lynn
has spent more than 20 years teaching adults English as a Second Language, job search skills, life skills
Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees
Webinar Transcript
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and career education, helping people find jobs and achieve their goals at work, at home and throughout
society.
Lynn has worked as a Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL) Immersion Program (VIP)
coordinator at San Francisco Human Services from its inception in April 2000 until 2010. VIP was chosen
as one of the top hundred programs in the 16th annual Innovations in America government award
competition in September 2002 and was a recipient of the Student’s Success Award from the California
Community Colleges in 2001.
Lynn is currently working at HSA’s Jobs Plus program teaching single adults who receive government
assistance job search skills and helping them get jobs. Before coming to HSA, Lynn was VESL coordinator
at the Jewish Vocational Services and an instructor at the City College of San Francisco, Golden Gate
University and Goodwill Industries.
Lynn has co-authored a job search skills textbook and workbook for ESL students, “Apply Yourself:
English for Job Search Success,” and it was published in 1996.
She has presented at numerous conferences and meetings on the topic and we are very, very pleased to
have her today as part of this Webinar. And please let me pass it over to Lynn Levey.
Lynn Levey: Well, thank you so much and I so appreciate the opportunity to do this presentation and to
talk about best practices of the VIP program. I am going to be focusing on the period of time from when
VIP began in 2000 to 2010 which is the time that I coordinated the program.
And so again, I would just like to say that the individuals and the students who participated in VIP had a
huge impact on all of us who worked with them. Their courage, their motivation, their determination
and their sense of humor changed all of us and I imagine that those of you who are listening share that
passion about developing programs that help limited English speakers and refugees have satisfying
employment and meaningful self-sufficient lives here in the US.
The things I am going to be talking about today are on the slide here. I am going to talk a little bit about
the history, the students that we serve, the collaboration. I am going to show a DVD and talk some
Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees
Webinar Transcript
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about the program design, instructional components, work participation and outcomes, contact
information and then questions and answers.
In terms of the history, VIP started in March 2000 and it was basically in response to the change in
welfare legislation that said that limited English speakers on welfare could only participate in welfare for
two years at one time.
And we realized that the classes that our clients were in were not providing them enough language for
them to be successful at work in those two years. So we implemented a new program that focused more
on intensive vocationally related classes.
The program went through another major change in April 2008 with the implementation of work
participation requirements for welfare recipients and that is when we incorporated the work
participation element into VIP. And you will see a lot of that demonstrated in the DVD that I am going to
show in a few minutes.
The students that we serve, all of them are receiving welfare. Some of them are on CalWorks, which is
California’s version of TANF, adults with dependent children, and some of them are in a program that
we have here in San Francisco called Personal Assisted Employment Services (PAES) which is for single
adult welfare recipients who are ready to work.
Our students come from diverse ages, languages, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, sort of
divide them into two major groups. One of the groups is people who have been here for a long time,
could be 5 or 20 years.
Basically most of them have less education, maybe not that much work experience and tend to be
isolated in their language and cultural community. And the other group of students are more recent
refugees and immigrants, usually tend to be well-educated, have good computer skills, stronger work
histories but they lack the knowledge of the American workplace and they lack in the American work
experience.
Using Intensive Vocationally-Focused ESL to Fast-Track Workforce Development Skills for Refugees
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There are three main aspects of VIP that I believe have made this such a successful program. One of
them is the instructional component, the fact that we have the expertise of City College, both
instruction and curriculum development.
The other one is the work participation components of the program - that students have real life
experience at the workplace. And the third is the collaboration. VIP is a collaboration between the San
Francisco Human Service Agency, the agency where I work, which provides the referrals and the overall
coordination of the program, Arriba Juntos, which is a community based organization that provides the
daily coordination of VIP. It (Arriba Juntos) is the employer for some of the work participation sites. We
have the facilities at Arriba Juntos location. They provide case management on a daily basis and the
development of the worksite and relationships with employers.
City College provides the instruction, curriculum development, language assessment and also placement
services. And we also have local employers, a very important component of the collaboration that
provides the worksites and the supervision.
So next what we would like to do is show the DVD so that you all can see the programs in action. And
you can see the students actually speak for themselves and talk about what participation the VIP has
meant to them. And the link should be on your computers right now.
Louisa Jones: And so you will not be able to click the link directly but if you type that into your
Internet browser (http://tinyurl.com/ORRWebinar) it will bring you to You Tube and you will be able to
watch the video. The link is also accessible in the upper right-hand corner of your screen in the handout
section. If you download that file, you will be able to click the link directly.
Please note that if your place of work or at the location you are at has a firewall, you may not be able to
view the video at this time but with the link you will be able to access it in the future. So we are going to
take about 8-1/2 minutes to watch this DVD right now and we will be back with you shortly. Thank you.