Thursday, the new PA CareerLink of Cambria County celebrated its grand opening at the Cambria County Library in downtown Johnstown.
CareerLink employees decided to relocate from the Greater Johnstown Career & Technology Center in Richland Township because 60 percent of the people they serve live within a three-mile radius of the City of Johnstown.
Now that they’ve moved to the library located at 248 Main Street, most of the people who need help writing a resume or looking for a job won’t have to spend hours on a bus to get there.
CareerLink also added two satellite offices, one at the Goodwill of the Southern Alleghenies headquarters in the Moxham neighborhood of Johnstown and the other at Young People’s Community Center in Ebensburg.
The new Johnstown site has new technology, like laptops, cellphones for employees, and video conference abilities so that people all over the county can attend workshops at any of the sites.
“We’re able to put the two locations in under one and still have some savings back for our taxpayers. We did not scale back on any of our services. If anything, we’ve expanded our services into other areas just by using technology,” said Jeff Dick, the CareerLink site administrator.
CareerLinks are federally funded and focus on workforce development, helping people write resumes, find a job, etc., all for free.
Before the ribbon-cutting and grand opening ceremony, local and state leaders, including Secretary of the PA Department of Labor & Industry Jerry Oleksiak.
Building all three sites cost under $20,000 and took about four months, thanks to donations and young adults from the YouthBuild Johnstown program, who work in the community while they earn their GEDs.
“The community would definitely come together with this. Everybody’s just coming together as one. You know, we all one. Everybody got their differences and got their problems, but we all just one nation, one society, one town just trying to, you know, do better,” said Antoine Nazario, one of the YouthBuild Johnstown workers.
This CareerLink is the first of its kind in the entire state because it’s located in a library.
“This is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania. It hopefully will be a model for what CareerLinks can do,” said Oleksiak.
The CareerLink at the Cambria County Library is open Monday-Thursday from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Fridays from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
The two satellite offices are open Monday-Thursday from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.