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Posted: June 26th, 2010 Greg Lacour

Patrick Nsibambi, who had trained in the Hospitality & Tourism field, offered his fellow graduates in Goodwill Industries’ Occupational Skills Training program some parting words – a Portuguese saying that, loosely translated, means, “The struggle continues.”

It wasn’t the cheeriest way to close. But there was no sense in denying reality. The 42 graduates were mainly professionals who had lost their jobs  and were trying to freshen their skills or learn new ones, then re-enter the workforce at a time of 12-percent unemployment.

Still, no one at the program’s graduation ceremony, at the Carole A. Hoefener Center uptown on June 25, was frowning much. This really was a fresh start for everybody. It was for Linda Lorde, who graduated from the OST program in February and now works the front desk at the Hampton Inn & Suites on Arrowood Road. Lorde was the guest speaker at the ceremony Friday.

“If you want it bad enough, you’ll do it,” Lorde said in her address. “When they see Goodwill, they know they have a good product.”

Goodwill’s Charlotte branch started the OST program in the midst of another recession in the early 1990s and since has provided job training to about 2,500 people in 103 classes. In Charlotte, trainees can choose Banking & Customer Service, Hospitality & Tourism or Occupational Skills; regardless of the choice, the goal is to help students get decent jobs and earn their financial independence.

Recently, though, the trainees are people who already have skills and experience. There’s Nsibambi, 37, a native of Uganda who lost his financial services job in Boston and, after months of fruitless searching for work, decided to relocate to Charlotte. “I began to get concerned about my predicament,” he said. “I began to realize, ‘This is a national crisis, and I am a part of that crisis.’ ”

Then there’s Susan Byrdsong, 42, who was laid off from her job managing a retail store at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in December 2008. Like Nsibambi, she spent months trying to find work. Then she saw a TV commercial about the OST program. Neither she nor Nsibambi knew Goodwill offered job training.

At graduation, Byrdsong had more than one reason to beam. A few days before, she had started her 9-week training at Convergys, a Cincinnati-based company with an office in Charlotte. The company operates call centers. She’s training to answer OnStar calls.

Byrdsong has no way of knowing whether she’d have gotten the job without the Goodwill training. But she thinks it helped.

“What it did was enhance the skills I had, and it taught me a lot about public speaking,” she said. “And I was able to add different things to my resume to make it stand out.”

Of course, training can take you only so far. Then you have to hit the bricks.

“We all have faith in you. But you have to have it in here,” said Lorde, tapping her chest. “Goodwill had the vision to do all this for you. You have to take the next step.”

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