Training days: Program prepares low- income San Franciscans for health care jobs.
Program focuses on jobs in health care support
Her voice shaking, the young woman at the podium introduced herself in English and Navajo. “Hi, my name is Ashley Tapaha. I’m so nervous right now.”
“We got you, Ashley,” a voice called out from among dozens assembled in an auditorium at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, while many chuckled in sympathy or called out other encouragements.
Tapaha launched into a graduation address. “This program taught me that I have a purpose,” she said. “It gave me hope that I, and all single mothers, can have a career.”
She was among 18 students, ranging in age from early 20s to mid- 40s, graduating from a workforce- development program called Excel ( short for excellence through community
engagement and learning). Excel prepares students for jobs providing administrative support in health care departments. Several organizations join forces to run it: UCSF, Jewish Vocational Services and San Francisco Human Services Agency’s Wage Subsidy Initiative. The Salesforce. com Foundation also provides some funding.
Specialized skills
The program starts with 10 weeks of classroom instruction covering both “soft” skills like interacting with patients, as well as computer literacy, medical terminology and other more specialized skills. Students then have four- month paid internships at various UCSF departments.
“Excel is a model of using work experience as a training tool,” said Abby Snay, executive director of Jewish Vocational Services. “On- the- job training reinforces the classroom learning.”
Most Excel students were previously on public assistance. Many entered the program with limited education and work experience. After graduating, they’re qualified for fulltime jobs with benefits starting at $ 20 an hour or more, a significant leap.
“All I’ve ever done my whole life is work for minimum wage,” Tapaha, 28, said later. Now she’s first in line for a job as an authorization coordinator in UCSF’s Urology Department that would pay $ 22 an hour plus benefits. She lives with her two sons, Junior, 5, and Alonzo, 18 months, in transitional housing, but is hopeful that she and her fiance, who qualifies for a veteran’s housing voucher, will soon be able to get their own place.
Wanting her sons to recognize the importance of her graduation, she bought them matching three- piece suits with ties and bright blue shirts, while she wore elaborate beaded Navajo earrings and a necklace, gifts from her mother. “My mom is very proud of me now, and I want my sons to be proud, too,” she said.
Excel, which just marked its fifth anniversary, has graduated 140 students, two- thirds of them African American. About half the graduates are from Bayview- Hunter’s Point and Visitacion Valley, two of the lowestincome neighborhoods in the city. The program says that 81 percent of graduates have landed career or temporary jobs, many of them at UCSF, the city’s second- largest employer.
‘ Part of a team’
“This is part of a larger movement toward equality,” said Diane Sabin, administrative director of UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, which regularly hires Excel interns and has two Excel graduates as permanent employees. “It presents an opportunity to have skills, a job, a title, a salary and benefits, and a way to contribute every day and be part of a team.”
The program is equally valuable for those who hire its graduates, said Jim Whelly, program manager of the San Francisco Human Service Agency’s JobsNow, which subsidizes most of the internship costs. “A diverse workforce brings a lot of important perspectives for a company and helps make it a more humane and more San Francisco place,” he said. “But companies tend to narrowcast ( when hiring); they have barriers of imagination.”
“These students are so motivated, so hungry for this opportunity,” said Damon Lew, program manager. “It springboards them into a career and changes the economic standing for them and their families.”
That hunger is reflected in the competition to land a slot; some 140 applicants vie for about 20 positions. Excel runs two programs a year.
“It’s been life- changing,” said Indira Winesberry, one of the new graduates, who had just landed a long- term temporary assignment at UCSF. “I had reached a dead end. Now the light is shining again.”
Dunenka Salah, 26, graduated from Excel a year ago and now works as a new- patient coordinator in UCSF’s Urology Department for $ 24 an hour plus benefits. A single mom who’d been living with family, she just moved with her 2- yearold son, Khalil, to their own apartment in East Oakland.
“I’m able to provide my child with a secure living situation and show him that hard work does pay off,” she said.
Salah plans to keep coming to the graduations.
“It fills my heart to see young people who look like me getting these opportunities,” she said.