Bienvenidos a Georgia
The Georgia component came under the umbrella of the Corporation in 1978 as the grantee for the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker program of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), Section 303. After the demise of CETA, we continued as the grantee for its replacement, JTPA (Job Training Partnership Act), Section 402, and new the Workforce Investment Act, (WIA) Section 167. Following after the employment and training program, others were added to our menu - noticeably, head start and housing.
Our employment and training program normally serves more than 600 farmworkers annually; these farmworkers come into the office seeking a wide variety of help and assistance. The majority of the help and assistance is in the form of supportive services. Over the past few years, more and more migrant farmworkers are settling out and becoming seasonal farmworkers or seeking non-agricultural employment, and employers across a broad spectrum of occupations are very receptive to hiring farmworkers. Telamon staff has been quite successful in accessing farmworkers to local training institutions for formalized training and even customized training when such needs have been developed. Employment and training activities are administered from our offices in Blackshear, Douglas, Dublin, Lyons, Statesboro and Valdosta. As a partner of the WIA system One-Stop System, access of core services are made available to customers not only farmworkers, but others as well.
Head Start. In 1982, Telamon became a delegate agency of East Coast Migrant Head Start Project for the operation of a migrant head start program. Originally one site was open but has since grown into three with hopes for others. This program provides an array of comprehensive services that include strong parental involvement, health and nutritional education, and solid academic curricula. The major goals are to facilitate a quality safe environment allowing children to learn and to promote child care education for parents at each of the three centers; a literacy component is included for the parents. These centers are named Kiddie Kastle I (Lyons), II (Glennville) and III (Norman Park) respectively. The centers are funded to serve 270 children annually, however, the actual number is always in access of 300 children not including services to other family members. Individualized services are provided to children with disabilities as when needed. The majority of the migrant families are in the service area from April through December.
The Georgia Housing component successfully administered a housing program for more than 15 years. Having received funds from Rural Development, formerly Farmers Home Administration, and leveraged funds of Community Development Block Grants and the Workforce Investment Act, the Georgia housing program has provided affordable, safe, standard housing for many farmworkers and other rural poor. Activities of the housing program includes providing weatherization, rehabilitation, and new construction when necessary. In addition to work done on housing, staff also provided technical assistance through a Department of Labor Housing grant. This grant allows staff to provide such assistance at no cost to individuals and organizations seeking to develop farmworker housing. In addition to being a site for our employment and training program, the Blackshear office also administers our housing efforts.
RIF (Reading Is Fundamental). This national program has been in Georgia for a number of years and has provided literally thousands of books to our customers. The RIF program attempts to motivate America's children to read often and well by involving them in reading activities as early as possible. Our offices normally sponsor events that involve children making the selection of their individual books as an activity. Since many of our customers are Hispanic, the book selection committee identifies books of various titles for each respective age group in both English and Spanish languages. All offices/centers participate in the RIF program.
While we are presently located in areas of the state where it was determined that our services are most needed, there are several others where services are needed but cannot be provided at this time due to limited resources. However, we are always seeking avenues in which we can offer our existing services and new ones in unserved areas so that we may continue our efforts of enhancing the lives of our target population.
Póngase en contacto con las oficinas de Georgia