Employment Program Targets Teen-Agers, Low-Income Adults : Jobs: Four agencies form a coalition in the northeast Valley, backed by a United Way grant. Bilingual classes, employment referrals and support are offered.

A new program launched Wednesday in the northeast San Fernando Valley will try to find jobs for unemployed teen-agers and improve job prospects for low-income working adults, particularly Latin American immigrants.

“We will serve the underemployed as well as the unemployed,” said Leticia Lazo-Acevedo, coordinator of the new Employment Support Services Program offered by a coalition of four social service agencies at the YWCA branch in the city of San Fernando.

The program offers classes in English and Spanish on job-hunting and the workplace, an employment referral service and a support group to help workers keep jobs once they are placed.

A $52,000 United Way grant will finance the effort, augmented by office space and volunteers from the YWCA and three Pacoima nonprofit agencies: Meet Each Need with Dignity (MEND), El Proyecto del Barrio, and the Pacoima Community Youth Cultural Center.

Unemployment rates among black and Latino teen-agers in the northeast Valley are as high as 50%, Lazo-Acevedo said. The areas of San Fernando, Pacoima, Sylmar, Sepulveda and surrounding neighborhoods are at least 60% Latino and 13% black, she said.

Many workers in those communities are “underemployed” immigrants from Latin America who have sporadic or marginal jobs: day laborers, housekeepers, sweatshop workers.

“We have a lot of clients who clean houses a couple of days a week,” MEND Director Marianne Hill said. “Hopefully, we can get them into something more stable.”

A job-skills class for adults has been operating since April. Classes accept low-income clients regardless of immigration status, Lazo-Acevedo said. But the job-referral service can only assist workers who are living in the United States legally, she said. And program administrators concede that the economic recession will make their mission difficult.

“We realize that times are tough at the moment,” Lazo-Acevedo said. She said officials believe entry-level jobs are still available and that some students have found work at shipping companies and a medical center.

Miriam Brauner, who teaches the job-skills classes, said she instructs immigrants about aspects of American work culture they might not have expected, such as interviewers asking about goals and personal weaknesses.

“These are not the kind of questions they hear in the countries they came from,” she said. “They are not used to it.”

A student who just completed Brauner’s class, 29-year-old Antonio Rodriguez, said he learned to present himself and overcame a fear of speaking English.

“Instead, I try to use what I know as well as I can,” said Rodriguez, who came to the United States from Mexico 10 years ago.

Rodriguez took the class after breaking an arm and going on disability from his job at a factory that manufactures faucets. He is looking for clerical work and hopes to take college courses as his English improves.