Program Trains Low-Income SF Residents for Campus Jobs

The Community Outreach Internship Program is recruiting departments for its ninth year of training community residents for jobs at UCSF. The program provides low-income San Francisco residents who have little or no work experience with a chance to change their lives through work. The program is a partnership between the University, the San Francisco Private Industry Council, the San Francisco Department of Human Services and Florence Crittenton Services, a community-based organization. Since 1996, nearly 100 city residents have participated in the program and many continue to work in a variety of University departments today. This year, 14 interns are expected to participate in the program. Interns typically work at the senior clerk and administrative assistant II levels and are trainees who want to increase their skills while learning new skills that can increase their marketability. Pediatric-Adolescent Medicine, Materiel Management, Public Affairs, Outdoors Unlimited, the School of Dentistry and the Comprehensive Cancer Center have participated in the program in the past. While interns are paid for their work, there is no cost to participating departments. Jan Mantle, a Comprehensive Cancer Center administrator at the UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion, believes the program motivates and benefits both interns and their new co-workers. "My staff has a chance to share their knowledge and teach skills they've been using for years," she says. "When they see these eager individuals who want to learn and maybe get a job like theirs it makes them be better workers." The next cycle of this community partnership activity begins in February. To become a participating department or to learn more information, contact Cynthia Brown in the Temporary Employment Program office, 476-4486, or Lisa Gray, UCSF Community Partnerships Program, at 476-3206.