ONE DC's Reece Chenault went out to public housing project Barry Farm a few weeks ago to look for potential recruits for a job training program to work at the Marriott hotel being built next to the Convention Center. He had a long presentation prepared, but he didn’t get far. He had expected 15 people to show up, but instead, the crowded room with around 50 Barry Farm residents stopped his presentation – they wanted to know how to apply.

The majority of residents knew the nuts and bolts of the program already. Word had traveled fast in a community where unemployment hovers around 23 percent, the median annual household income is $15,556 and the average home price is $65,000.

ONE DC is targeting residents in this neighborhood, and others in Wards 5, 6, 7 and 8, for the new program it's launching that will train 600 District residents for jobs in the hospitality sector at the new Marriott Marquis hotel, scheduled to open May 2014. The program has already received over two thousand applications.

For many Chenault talks to, unemployment has become a part of life, as has the sinking self-confidence that accompanies it. He tells the story of one woman who was unemployed for 22 years, initially for a disability, but then could not find a job after rehabilitation.

“No one would take the chance on her, and this means the world for someone like that,” he says. “We are dealing with folks who may not have a GED or have been temporarily housed. And Marriott has said they’re welcome there.”

�We didn�t know just how desperate these folks felt, until they felt they could tell us."

The non-profit has long known that jobs are scarce for low-income residents – there’s competition from residents in Virginia and Maryland for jobs, and a public education system that doesn't often lead to the knowledge worker jobs Washington is known for. So when Chenault and others saw an opportunity to bring a hotel to the District, ONE DC staffers started going to city council meetings to try to find a sponsor for a bill and garner the support for District money to bring a hotel into town.

It took two years of public hearings, education of council members, door knocking and research to bring the project to fruition, but finally, in August, Goodwill of Greater Washington announced that it would be running the training program along with United Way of the National Capital Area, the University of the District of Columbia Community College, Progressive Partners, LLC, GROW LLC, the OMG Center for Collaborative Learning and other District-based organizations. 

The training program hasn’t started yet – ONE DC is still going out to community centers, churches and knocking on doors to find people to apply. The program will run from December to March, in time for the May opening.
 
ONE DC has tried to do something like this before, but was told it wasn’t “marketable,” says Chenault. When Embassy Suites was opening in Foggy Bottom, it included 20 District residents in a training program, but only four people stayed employed at the hotel. The training program, Chenault says, wasn’t comprehensive enough.

“We realized we needed a whole new structure and method of dealing with workforce development. It can’t be service-based and handing out clothes and doing resumes, we had to deal with structural issues of people’s lives,” Chenault says.

The Marriott program will go beyond training people to serve food and vacuum carpets. Participants will get training in conflict resolution, teamwork, critical thinking, professionalism, effective verbal and non-verbal communication and financial management.

Also in the curriculum will be interviewing techniques, word-processing, spreadsheets, business reading, writing and math and basic computer skills.

Making a business case for not just churning people through a few weeks of training helped ONE DC's pitch get accepted this time.

Colleen Paletta, Goodwill of Greater Washington's vice president of workforce development, says that these jobs also provide room for advancement, which for some jobs filled by low-income workers, is not an option.

“What’s great about the hospitality industry is that there are career opportunities -- when you talk to Marriott employees, they work there for a long time,” Paletta says. (Dan Nadeau, the GM of the Marriott Marquis brand, started as a busboy in Boston.) Goodwill will also track the retention of trainees six months after the hotel opens.

The training program will be expansive, covering hospitality, reading and math skill assessments, customer service, digital literacy and life skills. Chenault acknowledges that there’s a lot riding on the success of the program, determined by how many employees stay at Marriott after it opens. It’s an opportunity he hopes trainees take advantage of, perhaps one of the first times in a long time they’ve been allowed to. “We didn’t know just how desperate these folks felt, until they felt they could tell us. The reality is that when it comes to gainful employment, the idea that people are constantly told ‘no,’ is the most damaging thing. The more we can combat that, the more helpful we can be,” Chenault says.