Unemployment tops 17 percent in Orlando’s Washington Shores neighborhood, while a few miles south, the region’s largest industry — hotels, motels, resorts, restaurants and attractions, collectively termed “hospitality” — is crying for qualified workers.
So the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist, Orlando, is addressing that dual need, partnering with Central Florida hospitality agencies to offer free, four-day job-readiness coaching and a periodic job fair. More than 60 people attended the rollout in August, and many of them landed jobs through the event.
The program consisted of three days of workshops followed by a Hospitality Institute Job Fair on Aug. 1. The Rev. Jabriel S. Ballentine, rector of St. John the Baptist, said he was delighted to be able to offer this opportunity to Central Florida’s willing but jobless residents.
“Unemployment in Washington Shores is just about three times the National Average. People need jobs,” Fr. Ballentine said. “By God’s grace and through this project we find ourselves in a position to provide people with the jobs they need.”
The church joined Hilton Hotels of Central Florida, the Orlando chapter of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association and the International Hospitality Center at Miami-Date College to provide workshop sessions about interviewing, resume writing, and working in the hospitality industry.
Todd Fisher, training manager with Hilton Hotels, stressed the flexibility the hospitality-industry job market provides.
“There is nothing in this planet that doesn’t touch hospitality, nothing. We need doctors, we need nurses, we need teachers, we need bus drivers, we need everybody,” he said.
“The analogy I always use is if you go to work for a bank and you decide that’s not for you and you want to do something different, you have to start all over,” Fisher said. “With a hotel, if you go to the front desk and you decide that’s not for you, you keep your seniority and you transfer to another department, because we have everything.”
Cathy Williams, also of Hilton Hotels, agreed.
“People don’t realize the footprint hospitality has in Orlando,” Williams said. “They don’t know that there are all these different niches that work together.”
Williams said the primary goal of the program was for participants to leave with a job in the hospitality industry, one that would provide career growth in a healthy sector.
Carita Wilson, who heard about the program through a shelter, now has a career path she thought she’d missed out on long ago.
“Hospitality was a dream of mine years ago, but I had twin sons that I was raising as a single mom,” Wilson told television station WOFL Fox 35 Orlando.
She said the program gave her the ability to see a future career for herself for the first time.
“I have tears in my eyes,” said Wilson. “I’d like to start in the lobby area and meet people as they’re coming through.”
Ideally, the organizers would like to hold the event two to four times a year. Bishop Gregory Brewer expressed his pride in the church’s ability to provide “such an incredible opportunity” for participants in the area.
“This is an example of how a parish really becomes a focal point and leader for its community,” he said.