A federal job training program that helps thousands of low-income seniors each year will resume in Vermont next week after a funding delay shuttered the program nationally in July.
It's a huge relief for dozens of older Vermonters who participate in the Senior Community Service Employment Program and were furloughed for months, like Tonya Conway Broyles of North Chittenden.
“At 63, I'm starting over,” said the former nurse and Air Force veteran.
Conway Broyles stopped working for 13 years to raise her kids. Now, in the midst of an ugly divorce, she said she felt both terrified and embarrassed looking for work.
Getting her nursing license back could take at least a year and cost a lot, she said. A more pressing problem, she realized, was that she had never gotten comfortable using a computer.
“You're, you know, floundering, I have all of this experience. I'm smart, but I don't know, should I apply at Walmart? I mean, what should I do?” she said.
Then last April, she discovered Associates for Training and Development. A4TD is a Vermont-based nonprofit that administers the Senior Community Service Employment Program in five northeastern states.
“They started at the very beginning asking, ‘Do you know how to use your phone?’" she said. "They went over: social media, Microsoft, Google. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I don't even have a computer!' It's just been phenomenal.”
A4TD participants in Vermont are paid $15 an hour during training and after they’re placed in jobs, usually with area nonprofits. Adults 55 and older can take part in the program for up to four years. Salaries vary by state depending on the local minimum wage.
Conway Broyles called the program a "godsend." She said it helped her save money for nursing school, pay her bills and learn how to compete in today’s job market.
But all that changed when the U.S. Department of Labor held up more than $300 million dollars in program funds on July 1. Suddenly, the training and paychecks for Conway Broyles and tens of thousand of other older Americans ended with no clear reason why.
In Vermont, more than two dozen community organizations, most of them nonprofits, have also been affected. In exchange for providing on-the-job-training, they get older workers they don’t have to pay for.
Audrey Bridge, Executive Director of Rutland's Community Cupboard, said the loss of two A4TD staffers they had hit hard.
“For instance, last month, we served 1,088 families," said Bridge. "All that food has to be ordered, moved, stored, stocked and distributed. That requires a lot of hands on deck. Hands we didn’t have.”
As to why the funding was held up, Associates for Training and Development CEO Alex Fizz said it's still murky.
Government officials told Fizz they were reevaluating A4TD and the 18 other organizations that administer the job training to make sure they "aligned" with Trump Administration priorities, he said.
“To our knowledge, all national grantees passed that review process,” said Fizz. “I'm just not sure why it took four months and why it didn't start until the funding was supposed to be released.”
No one from the U.S. Department of Labor responded to requests for information.
Fizz is relieved A4TD can start working with seniors like Conway Broyles again on Nov. 19.
“We're feeling excited to be able to call them before Thanksgiving and tell them they get to go back. But when you haven't gotten a paycheck in four months…that's good news, but it's still hard news to hear because the last four months have been very hard,” he said.
