\nAt St. Patrick’s, I chatted with a guy from the state Labor Department who said community-based job search programs are real, important anchors for people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“When people come to see me, they’re blown away, devastated,” he said. “When they come here to a comfortable environment, it’s like a ray of hope.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also bumped into Damian Gagnon of Croton-on-Hudson, who came to the meeting because he heard it was EARN’s 20th birthday, and he wanted to say thanks. He had come to meetings after he lost his job following 9\/11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was a real tough time in my life; I was 51, two kids in college,” said Gagnon, who is now a corporate compliance and social responsibility officer for a diamond company. “EARN meant so much to me. I didn’t get a job through them, but they gave me a lot of ideas and kept me focused.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You don’t have to be a Christian, or even a believer, to show up at an EARN meeting. But the meeting opened with a prayer. “Place your hands on us and guide our steps and keep us focused …”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
And here’s Damian, doing his imitation of a Cuban tobacco plantation mogul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Damian, uhh, are we still invited over for the Easter egg hunt?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He got 5 to 7 for robbing a Dairy Queen. Of course that’s a (little) joke. Here’s the article from Saturday’s Journal News. Like myself, Damian’s best feature is his wife. Jeanne Marie For 20 years, St. Patrick’s has helped people find jobs | lohud.com | The Journal News At St. Patrick’s, I chatted with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3728"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10300,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728\/revisions\/10300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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