Unemployment resource kit for prison test

Press, 30 September 1988, Page 39

Unemployment resource kit for prison test

PA Wellington A resource kit for the unemployed called “How to Succeed in Getting a Job” is about to be trialed by the Justice Department for use in prisons. The kit has been developed by Mr lan Stephensen, of the Tactics Foundation. Mr Stephensen formed the foundation about a year ago after his furniture manufacturing company folded. “I needed something to do so I put an advertisement in the paper offering to prepare people’s resumes for job interviews and got a phenomenal response,” he said. Many of the people whose resumes he prepared wanted to know about other ways of getting jobs, which led Mr Stephensen to run courses on finding work.

The package he has now developed has already been used by some community and Access groups and overseas publishers have shown interest in selling the package in Australia, America and Europe.

Although he did not develop the package with the aim of making money, he “can draw a pay cheque from time to time.”

“But it is not enough to try to tackle unemployment without getting at its causes.”

Mr Stephensen said that until he worked with Aboriginals on an Australian mission station he did not really know how devastating unemployment could be.

He had been “protected” until then, having

always had easy access to jobs. He is launching a Buy New Zealand campaign in February because of his belief that New Zealand is turning into a “service industry," selling raw materials to other countries but buying readymade goods itself. “Most of the jobs now being lost are in the production sector and the only way to combat that is to persuade people to buy locally made goods, even if they are a little dearer.” he said. Labour Department figures given last week showed that almost 7000 people joined the dole queues in August, taking the number of registered unemployed to 126,134 — 35,982 more than a year ago.