Income Boost
Walter Simmons, president & CEO of Employ Prince George’s. PHOTO: ARIAN TYLER, EMPLOY PRINCE GEORGE’S MEDIA SPECIALIST
Employ Prince George’s Is Changing With The Times And The First Step Has Been To ‘Put Money In People’s Pockets.’
UPDATED APRIL 9, 2020 // 9:15 A.M. EST
By Raoul Dennis
For too many families across the nation, the world is upside down. Hourly wage earners are feeling the weight of that pressure in Prince George’s County.
Employ Prince George’s has set up a relief fund for hourly wage earners who have been negatively impacted by the Coronavirus.
Employ Prince George’s (EPG) has partnered with the Greater Washington Community Foundation to launch the Prince George’s County COVID-19 Hourly Employee Relief Fund.
The fund will provide $200 Visa Cash Cards to 2,000+ low-wage hourly workers laid off in Prince George’s County due to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This fund was established with $100,000 in funding from the Greater Washington Community Foundations COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund and a $100,000 match from Employ Prince George’s.
Only two weeks since launch, the fund is nearly halfway toward the $500,000 goal.
In an interview with Prince George’s Suite, Walter Simmons, President and CEO of Employ Prince George’s discussed the progress of the plan and other efforts that are coming online in coming weeks.
“Putting money directly in the hands of people is what is needed,” he says. “The biggest thing that we can do while the federal government is trying to figure out the stimulus checks and state government is figuring out unemployment, is to be the stopgap to put money in people’s pockets in the meantime.”
Normally, Employ Prince George’s (EPG) is in the business of helping people get trained in new careers or careers that pay higher wages. But these days, Simmons says that the agency wanted to find ways to do more to help the community more directly.
“We decided to create a relief fund for hourly employees being laid off,” he says. “We reached out to the Community Foundation and they agreed and funded us with a grant for $100,000. The Employ Prince George’s board approved an additional $100,000 with the help of local funding from local business members.”
“We announced the program on April 1 with $200,000 of the $500,000 goal. We made a call to action and the community responded: by the end of the week, we raised $7,000 from community members,” Simmons says.
The fundraising continues at employpg.org and through social media.
“We opened applications April 6 and by 11 a.m. we had over 150 applications. We expect that number to reach over 300 by the end of the day,” Simmons says.
The CEO expects to receive 1,500 applications by the end of the week.
To apply, register at https://employpgedge.com/ then select "Apply for the Prince George's County Hourly Employee COVID-19 Relief Fund" and follow the prompts.
The fund will provide $200 gift cards to assist hourly employees before federal unemployment insurance kicks in, and will prioritize hourly employees making $19/hour or less.
The agency will begin dispersing cards as early as the week of April 6 at an undisclosed location.
Easy To Apply
“We created a portal for this,” Simmons says of the effort to make applying for the gift cards seamless.
Applicants are only required to be Prince George’s County residents. Citizenship status is not a factor and the site is Spanish language accessible. Even social security numbers are not a requirement.
“We are asking for name, contact information and proof that you are an hourly-waged employee that has been laid off,” he says.
The application process should only take 15 mins.
Simmons says that the portal has an additional purpose. It allows users to get resume help and interview skills in case the job they were laid off from isn’t restored. “We can re-engage them as they may later move on to other jobs in other industries.
Another New Program Coming: Skill Up Prince George’s
Employ Prince George’s will announce a new virtual learning system by the end of April that will include over 4,000 courses for anyone who wants to improve and/or broaden their professional skill set.
It will be called Skill Up Prince George’s.
Skill Up Prince George’s will be a game-changer for anyone from high school junior to laid-off worker to college professor who wants to add to their resume and job aptitude. It will be free to Prince George’s County residents.
“We will create a virtual learning platform,” Simmons says. “We will unlock 4,000 free online courses for people that range from business management, career readiness, human resource, finance, IT and more. Everyone knows the old adage: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. We know that people will have hours of time that they are going to be home. We know that people don’t have the finances; we know that educational institutions are trying to move toward virtual. So as the workforce arm of Prince George’s County and a member of this community we are going to put a resource out there to help.”
Deni Taveras and Walter Simmons (FILE PHOTO: RAOUL DENNIS // PRINCE GEORGE’S SUITE MAGAZINE & MEDIA
“We know that we will come out of this,” he says of the pandemic that has benched nearly 20,000 Prince Georgian workers. “When we do we will assure that our residents are prepped for whatever is available, to take the new economy on and to be competitive in the marketplace. When they do come back to work they will need a raise and a promotion because they will have more skills than when they left,” he says with a confident smile.
EPG partnered with Metrix Learning (New York Wired), a New York-based virtual education company, to develop Skill Up Prince George’s.
Skill Up Prince George’s is scheduled to launch by April 20.
The Latino Community Connection
“We opened up this fund to everyone who is part of our Prince George’s County family,” Simmons says.
As the county is 20% Latino, Employ Prince George’s has always been engaged in outreach that has been inclusive of Spanish-speaking families and job seekers.
In addition to bilingual marketing materials, the office partners with groups such as Latin American Youth Center, El Poder and others to connect with Latino residents. He announced that EPG will host a webinar with El Poder in the coming weeks to address specific questions. The agency also works closely with County Councilmember Deni Taveras (D-District 2), whose district is heavily Latino.
“We are going to make sure that every single workforce development and employment resource is accessible to everybody,” he says.
Call To Action
The leadership at EPG is calling on the community to help with the fund.
“There are thousands of people – our neighbors – who either have lost their jobs or who will be filing for unemployment in the weeks ahead,” Simmons says. “We are looking for donations from those who are able. We want people to visit the website and donate what they can so our community members can weather this storm.”
This story will be updated Saturday, April 11. Watch this space.
