| Working to get
people 'Jobs for Life'
By Lynda Edwards - ARIZONA
DAILY STAR - Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.19.2005
A tangle of seeming contradictions surrounds
Jaime Oviedo.
He considers himself an observant Jew although he serves
as a pastor at an evangelical Christian church.
A former Green Beret, Oviedo was Hispanic outreach director
for the conservative, politically powerful Focus on the
Family ministry before he was laid off in October. He cheerfully
admits he often shocked Focus bosses by courting Democrats
for his anti-poverty efforts - and by sounding like a moonstruck
teen after meeting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
"I'm an oddity," Oviedo said. "But I understand
poverty because I've been there."
Oviedo, 45, came to Tucson in June, armed with master's
degrees in business and divinity, to become the new Western
region director for National Jobs Partnership. The faith-based
job-training program was founded 10 years ago in North Carolina
and has more than 20 outposts in eight states.
It offers a 36-hour course designed to help even the most
unemployable - recovering addicts, lifelong welfare recipients
- by teaching social and emotional skills, from small talk
with a potential boss to healing psychic wounds inflicted
by a parent.
"People don't realize poverty is so isolating,"
Oviedo said. "We surround students with champions and
mentors to cheer them through what may look like small steps,
like getting a job interview scheduled, but are huge to
someone taking them for the first time."
Churches and community organizations become training sites
by buying the Partnership's $350 Jobs for Life Tool- kit.
And in Tucson, Oviedo promises the sites will have business
leaders' backup.
Beth Walkup, Mayor Bob Walkup's wife, recruited 911 Collision
Centers president Mike Quinn. He's ready to offer jobs and
emotional support to graduates of the Tucson program.
Quinn's company won an honorable mention in an international
Better Business Bureaus' ethics competition last fall. He
attributes some of his success to boyhood mentoring he got
through the Big Brothers program.
"The (Jobs for Life) mentoring really caught my eye.
Society with all this machismo crap makes men feel they
can't be confused or ask for help," said Quinn.
Oviedo said machismo makes it especially tough for Latino
men to reach out for help.
Tucson's Iglesia de Dios Vida Nueva, at 5284 S. 17th Ave.,
will host what Oviedo believes is the first completely bilingual
Jobs for Life training. The church has at least 1,500 congregants,
and many have already offered to be mentors for Spanish-
and English-speaking students, said Pastor Sam Santana.
He said a donor gave the church five computers so Jobs for
Life students can gain technical skills.
Oviedo has jumped cultural boundaries his whole life. Born
in Colombia, he came to the United States at age 3. His
parents split up during the 1960s, a time when Oviedo remembers
a woman couldn't rent an apartment without a man cosigning
the lease.
Oviedo and his mother slid from middle class to poor. He
graduated from Upsala College in New Jersey, which he attended
on a soccer scholarship, then served as a cop in the state.
He joined the military to become a Green Beret, served as
a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent
in New York City and founded his own security consulting
firm.
Throughout his career, he volunteered with local churches
working with the homeless and impoverished families, he
said. The unpaid work led to a heady job offer in 1999 from
Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. Oviedo
launched programs aimed at helping single parents and mentored
Latino pastors who wanted to create social-services programs
at their churches.
"At Focus on the Family, I was the only one to go meet
with Democrats, talk, joke and play with them to get them
on board to lobby for poverty initiatives," Oviedo
said. "Poverty isn't a partisan issue."
He was invited to speak at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus,
where Clinton chatted with him.
"Senator Clinton was so charming and charismatic,"
Oviedo enthused. He still has a photo of them talking. "She's
gazing into my eyes, hanging on my words. She makes everybody
feel like that!"
So how did his Focus bosses react to the picture in these
politically polarized times?
"They were a little shocked," he confessed.
Now, less than a year after his layoff, he is supervising
Tucson's Jobs for Life. Steve Roseman of the Fred G. Acosta
Job Corps Center, where trainees get housing as well as
job skills, welcomes Oviedo as a complement, not a competitor.
"We can use as many job programs as possible in Tucson,
especially with public schools being so hard-hit financially,"
Roseman said. "Ninety percent of Arizona high school
students don't go on to college. They need the training."
Roseman praised local carpenters, steamfitters and electricians
unions for offering internships. But as unions decrease
in size, those offers are dwindling, he said.
Oviedo's new boss, Partnership CEO Skip Long, is happy so
many churches are ready to help. But he still balks at that
phrase "faith-based" since some believe it is
code for "Republican." "We welcome Dem-ocrats
and Republicans as donors and mentors, and we can use anyone's
prayer."
Contact reporter Lynda Edwards at 573-4179 or ledwards@azstarnet.com.
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