By Stephen Smoot
In West Virginia’s farming counties, many young men and women work their first jobs on farms. These could be operations run by neighbors, local businesses, or even their own families. Work experience could run the full spectrum of building fence, feeding and caring for livestock, cutting Christmas trees, maintaining poultry houses, tending to honey bee hives, and much more.
While some teenagers and young adults may want to find better paying jobs in another field, many others want to learn more about agricultural work to advance in their job or perhaps run their own farm someday.
Telemon can help.
Across West Virginia, in different areas, Telamon offers various types of support programs. In Berkeley County, for example, the organization works to find appropriate homes for those without. That support could also include financial coaching, mortgage and foreclosure assistance, and transitional housing.
The non profit’s work in the Potomac Highlands, however, centers on its partnership with the National Farm Worker Jobs Program.
According to the United States Department of Labor, the agency that operates the program, it is “a nationally-directed, locally-administered program of services for migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their dependents.”
The program, which dates back to 1965, came like many others from the experience of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s rural Texas upbringing. This brought him face to face with some of the dire conditions faced by farm workers common in some parts of the United States.
He wrote later in his presidential autobiography, “The Vantage Point” that “as I looked out on the nation from the President’s Oval Office, my reflections included images burned deep in my mind for over half a century. I remembered my father’s concern for the tenant farmers . . . I remembered my mother’s deep faith in the value of education.”
Barbara Fortner works as a career advisor with Telamon’s Moorefield office. She shared that the primary mission of the partnership is to “help them to get an education and to get another job” or “improve chances of promotion in work they’re at.” She stated that the program will “help anyone in farm work” who meets the criteria.
Telamon’s website provides another reason to join the program, saying, “become self-sufficient in lean times.”
Fortner shared the story of a Grant County teenager who worked on his family’s farm and earned $100 a month. Because he could show regular earnings as a farm worker, he could qualify for the income-based program even though his parents’ income was above the criteria.
Telamon supported the young man’s trades training in a field that can on one hand pay a lucrative salary and on the other also help out on the farm at the South Branch Career and Technical Center.
Also, according to the website, “our trained staff members work one on one with you to develop a plan to meet your needs and help you achieve your goals.” It goes on to state that “the programs can help you identify career paths and assess your skills and interests.”
Services can include career counseling, job/classroom training, customized training, remedial education and GED preparation, English as a second language classes, skills learning and occupational credentialing, job placement, and pre-apprenticeship programs.
The youth program accepts individuals between the ages of 14 and 24, but a separate opportunity for adults exists as well.
Cash incentives help to drive participation. Meeting with one’s career counselor once a month will get the participant $50, as will earning a C average on a report card. Receiving a high school diploma earns the participant $100.
While none of these will make the worker wealthy, the cash incentives are good examples of rewards that reinforce desired behaviors and outcomes.
Additionally, Telamon partners on the program with the West Virginia Division of Rehabilitation Services. This agency, according to its website, “helps youth and adults with disabilities (ages 14 and up) on their path to work and live independently.”
It does that by providing “vocational services to help individuals with disabilities prepare for, obtain, retain, or advance in employment.” Those with a disability signed up with Telamon can also receive support and service from WVDRS.
Fortner shared that one woman who had lost her leg – then her job and insurance – asked Telamon for assistance. Staff connected her with the former West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources to obtain a prosthetic leg that tremendously benefited her quality of life.
She also stated that the program can work with Future Farmers of America and 4-H to provide support to those wishing to advance in agriculture.