Throughout the past year the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP) has used federal economic stimulus funds to organize dozens of classes to train eastern Kentuckians in high demand careers where jobs can be found locally.

That investment is already paying off for people like Archie Jenkins, 51, of Harlan.

Archie has been hired as assistant district maintenance and operations supervisor for Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, even though he is still taking classes in his EKCEP-funded Industrial Maintenance training program.

Conveniently, Archie’s classes are located at Southeast’s Cumberland campus, where he now works.

“This class is proof that if you want to better yourself, you can do it. You just have to put forth the effort,” Archie said.

Archie is no stranger to effort. The Harlan County native enrolled at Southeast immediately after high school, but changed his mind and went to work to start earning money.

After going through several jobs he ended up in construction. Although the money in construction was good, the work was not always stable, he said.  Also, he missed some important family moments because work-related travel often kept him away from home.

In November 2009 his last construction job ended with a layoff, and he started to look for a change of careers.

One of the resources Archie checked out was the Harlan County Community Action Agency (HCCAA), which provides Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs under contract with EKCEP. There he met with Jill Blevins, a WIA career counselor, who helped him decide that industrial maintenance was the right choice for him.

Jill helped Archie enroll in the free training and other WIA services that are available to workers who have lost their jobs.

“Doors started opening up for me then,” Archie said.

Archie said he “learned a lot in the classes about repairing and maintaining facilities, and he also got to beef up his resume with contacts and industrial maintenance education that backed up his decades of varied job experience.

When the WorkNow Kentucky subsidized summer work program came along, Archie was able to put these advantages to work in a summer job working in the maintenance department at Southeast. He impressed his employers so much that they hired him full-time after WorkNow ended in September.

WorkNow was a summer employment program funded with ARRA funds through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, and delivered by a cooperative effort of Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services and Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development. In eastern Kentucky, the program was administered by the EKCEP, with services provided through local community action agencies like HCCAA.

Archie said that the benefits of his new maintenance job — such as shorter hours, closeness to home, and more time for his family and his hobbies and fishing — more than make up for the fact that it doesn’t  pay was well as his construction jobs did.

Archie has maintained a 4.0 GPA in his classes and made the dean’s list. He’s glad that he is finally getting a chance to finish the associate’s degree he started so long ago at Southeast.

“It feels good,” he said with a smile.

Archie recommends that anyone who has lost a job should look into the services offered at their local WIA office.

“There are things out there that will help you. You’ve just got to look for them,” Archie said.

For more information about WIA services in Harlan County, call 606-589-3121. Or visit http://www.ekcep.org or http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.