A grant-funded program called POSE (Project of Self-Empowerment), along with the support of other organizations and area businesses, is helping people on government assistance help themselves.

The program targets individuals who have been on welfare for long periods and offers services and opportunities for them to become self-sufficient through finding rewarding, long-term employment. Seventy percent of the POSE clients have received government assistance for more than 30 months, and the remaining 30 percent are accepted into the program based on individual case needs.

The $1 million grant from the Department of Labor provides clients with the means to get on the path towards self-sufficiency, whether by providing child care, job training or simply transportation to a job interview, said POSE Director Jay Slauter.

San Juan Basin Technical School, local social-service agencies, family centers and adult-education providers, along with many other individuals and organizations, are combining there services and efforts to make the program a success.

"We don’t serve our clients by ourselves," Slauter said. "We do it in cooperation with other service providers."

POSE services were initiated in March 2000, with the first client enrolling in April. Along the way, three case managers came on board. Now in its 11th month, the program serves 42 area residents.

Slauter said one quality that makes POSE unique is that of smaller case loads for the case workers. He said each of the three case workers has 12-15 clients with whom they work on a close basis.

"We provide a lot of individual case management, time and support as individuals," Slauter said. "The case managers spend time seeing their clients, getting to know them pretty well. We’re able to provide individualized and unique case-management services really directed at whatever the individual needs of that particular clients are."

Slauter said the program focuses on individuals’ strengths rather than what has kept them from being successful in the past.

"We do job searches and development on behalf of our different clients," Slauter said. "Our case managers spend a significant amount of time trying to identify what their clients’ interests are, what their dreams are and what they really want to do career-wise as well as their aptitude — what they’re good at."

He said the identification of those personal traits is key to finding out how the clients can be helped.

"We focus on those areas and bring those to the attention of the client, acknowledging them," Slauter said. "That’s the first step, I think, in the process of self-empowerment — to realize they have some strengths and start building on them."

One of the most prevalent ways in which POSE helps its clients financially is through subsidized employment where POSE pays a percentage of the individual’s wages for the employer.

"That is a big percentage of what our grant funding is used for," Slauter said. "It’s to help employers bring in an employee, give them a chance to try a job, give them some on-the-job training that they otherwise probably would not have with the expense."

And after a client has taken a permanent position, the help doesn’t immediately end.

"We don’t walk away and say, ‘OK, you’ve got your job, life is all roses from this point on,’" Slauter said. "We are still there and available on an intensive level to help them with whatever barriers might come up at that time, when they’re transitioning essentially from having received public assistance to working for somebody else, taking care of their children, getting their own transportation and being self-sufficient.

"Once we place a client, we’re there as long as we’re in operation," Slauter said.

POSE client Desiree Oakes of Dolores is employed as a sales and production assistant at KRTZ 98.7 radio station in Cortez as a result of the program.

"I’ve always been stumped as to what I really want to do with my life," Oakes said.

But one day, about eight months ago, she was listening to a talk show on the radio and she realized that a profession in radio broadcasting would be right up her alley.

"I thought, ‘I can do that, that’s what I want to do’," Oakes said. "I’ve loved music all my life, and I told my case manager, Melissa (with POSE), that working on the radio station would really be a dream of mine, but I always thought it was out of reach."

Oakes said three weeks later her case manager arrived at her house with the good news.

"She told me she had gotten me a job interview with KRTZ," she said.

At a POSE meeting Thursday, Oakes’ employer, Lan DeGeneres of KRTZ, sang the program’s praises, even giving the audience a sample of Oakes’ achievements. DeGeneres proudly played a commercial Oakes had produced and performed in for the radio station.

"She has a very bright future," DeGeneres said. "It’s been a real win-win situation."

Oakes said that having a job she finds stimulating has motivated her to work hard and set bigger goals.

"When I’m learning, it comes so naturally," Oakes said. "With everything else I’d have to be told three or four times and I’d become uncomfortable or discouraged. Now it just clicks. I’ve never been able to learn like that."

Slauter said POSE also gives clients the opportunity to go to school as part of their program to gain skills, making them more marketable in their job pursuits.

"Five clients will be enrolling in the vocational education programs at SJBTS at the beginning of the semester in January," Slauter said.

Also supplementing education is new equipment such as computers and broadcasting equipment provided by POSE that will be used for free television classes available to anyone in the community.

POSE executive committee member Ann Miller said the classes will include job and career preparation, math for technical careers, reading, parenting and much more.

Miller said additional grants are being looked at to provide assistance in job training and placement of fathers and non-custodial parents. She said there are hopes for a program aimed to help those who have court-ordered child-support payments and have not been meeting them because of a lack of income.

Education and employment aside, Slauter said POSE can help clients with personal issues by providing help with a wide range of services from car repairs to child care and mental-health therapy to instruction on appearance presentation for job interviews.

"If we have a client who is about to be evicted with her kids because she can’t pay the rent, for one month we can come in and provide emergency housing assistance," Slauter said. "And during that time we are working with them to come up with plans so that it doesn’t happen again."

Slauter said that although POSE provides the means for success, the clients’ actions are the crucial ingredient.

"They have to be invested in this as well," Slauter said. "They have to literally believe in what they’re trying to do, and believe that they can be successful and become self-empowered, for what we’re trying to do for them to work at all.