Lion's Club Date Night  

Sat., May 14, 2011
7-10 pm
An evening of local food and wine, as well as auctions and live music.

Proceeds benefit Lions Causes For Kids.

For more information, go to www.lglions.org 

Venue-a-Thon Seeking Talent
The Venue/APFT is looking for performers, volunteers, actors, comedians and talented youth in our community. The Venue-a-Thon is a live broadcast telethon on May 15 benefitting both APFT and KCAT educational programming. For more information, click here.

Client Profile: Carney, Sugai and Sudweeks, LLP    

Our newest client is a local law firm, Carney, Sugai and Sudweeks, LLP.  CSS specializes in high quality estate planning, estate and trust administration, probate, and elder law services.  They have hired one of our teens to assist them with entry level bookkeeping tasks such as accounts payable and receivable.  This is a terrific opportunity for one of our teens to learn very practical skills as well as the QuickBooks software program.  "We are pleased to provide this opportunity to a local teen.  He has been quick to learn and we are impressed with his professionalism," said Leslie Sugai, a partner at CSS.

Program Updates   

Foster Youth Program:  This is moving along nicely.  We have completed 6 hours of work readiness training with 10 teens.  The first group began working with our client, The Terraces of Los Gatos earlier this week.

Summer Internship Program:  We have received our first few Internship opportunities and have been identifying teens and arranging interviews.  Our goal is 15 for this summer, and we would greatly appreciate referrals to small and medium businesses that would like to create win-win experiences for teens who are returning to town for the summer.

Success story in Alternative Staffing:  DePaul Industries 

TeenForce is a member of the Alternative Staffing Alliance, which is a group of non-profit staffing companies that serve populations with high barriers to employment.  The story below highlights the terrific success of a fellow Alliance company, and inspires us with respect to the future prospects for growth at TeenForce.

Congratulations to member Dave Shaffer, chief executive of DePaul Industries, on his recent selection as a semi-finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2011 Award in the Pacific Northwest. It's unusual for a non-profit executive to reach this level of competition.

In addition to its temporary staffing services, DePaul Industries operates two other businesses - security services and food and consumer goods packaging - to fulfill its mission to provide employment opportunities for people with disabilities, employing over 2,000 people altogether. 

Dave and his team continue to show how competitive staffing services and other market-driven businesses offer a powerful way for people with barriers to employment to participate and succeed in the workforce. As Dave puts it, "the problem is big, so the solution needs to be big."