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Tag Archive for: Bridges from School to Work

Bucking the Trends and Building a Bridge to Success

As the Great Resignation continues to make headlines, let’s take a moment to celebrate a young man committed to a job he has held since finishing high school. Traveon B. of Dallas has worked with Aramark Uniform Services for over four years. Traveon’s Aramark tenure is especially impressive when you consider that young adults hold on average five to six different jobs between the ages of 18 and 24, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Traveon

When Traveon was 20 and a student at Multiple Skills Magnet Center, a Dallas vocational school where he took classes to learn how to work in a commercial laundry, he enrolled in the Bridges program, which helps young adults with disabilities prepare for and connect to competitive jobs aligned with their interests and abilities. Program staff from the Bridges program knew that Traveon would be an ideal candidate for a job at Aramark Uniform Services, where he would work as part of a large team that loads, sorts, washes, dries, and presses tons of laundry processed at the facility every day.

Dallas Bridges Director Rob Mollard says, “Traveon is one of the best workers Aramark Uniform Services has ever seen. He uses DART public transit for his daily commutes to the Aramark facility near Love Field, and he never misses a day of work. He has accumulated so much paid time off that his supervisor recently made him take a vacation.”

Now 25, Traveon is a seasoned Aramark team member, working full-time with benefits and earning a competitive salary that represents a significant contribution to his family’s overall household income. Traveon even helps train and orient new Aramark employees, showing them how to navigate the large warehouse facility that processes truckloads of laundry from area hospitals, universities, and cafeterias. “Traveon is such an asset that Aramark has recently hired another participant from the Bridges program,” says Mollard.


Allen Brown is a grant writer and communications lead with Bridges From School to Work, a grantee partner of Johnson Scholarship Foundation.

 

Determination Overcomes a Disrupted Journey

Jamieson Holloway, now 23, has been pursuing his passion for cooking since he was a student at Atlanta’s D.M. Therrell High School, where he took culinary classes and enrolled in the Bridges from School to Work program (Bridges). Bridges has worked with Atlanta Public Schools since 1996 to help young adults with disabilities prepare for, connect to, and succeed in good jobs. Bridges arranged for Jamieson to work part-time for two consecutive seasons at Turner Field Stadium, where he excelled at frying chicken tenders, French fries, and other stadium fare for hungry Atlanta Braves fans during the baseball season.

After high school, he continued to pursue his goal of becoming a chef, taking culinary courses at Atlanta Technical College. And like many chefs before him, Jamieson’s culinary career began in earnest through washing dishes. With help from Bridges, he got a dishwasher job at the Atlanta Hilton downtown in fall 2016, progressing from there to food prep and breakfast cook, and working through spring of 2020 until the pandemic hit. Since then, he’s been on furlough, but he landed full-time work as a line cook at a local senior living community, a job he found on his own. Jamieson’s continued employment and income have been essential for his family during the pandemic.

Jamieson hopes to return to the Hilton when the travel and tourism industry begins to rebound. He has also developed his own blend of barbeque sauce that he hopes one day to market and distribute as a successful entrepreneur.

For his hard work and determination, Jamieson was selected as the 2020 Stephen G. Marriott Youth Achievement Honoree. He shares his story in the video below:


Allen Brown is the Director of Grants and Project Development for Bridges from School to Work. He has worked with Bridges for 19 years.