COUNTYWIDE : 2 Lauded for Efforts to Get Off Welfare

A year ago, Fausto Rivas was a homeless, unemployed high school dropout with a growing family.

Today, Rivas is still unemployed, but he has a high school equivalency diploma and is enrolled at Ventura College.

Because of his drive, Rivas, 24, was honored Wednesday by Ventura County’s Greater Avenues for Independence program, designed to help welfare recipients become self-sufficient.

Rivas was one of two program participants awarded trophies during a ceremony attended by about 40 Public Social Services Agency employees. The other recipient was Laurie Jacobsen, who learned new job skills through GAIN that enabled her get a job as a corrections officer.

GAIN, begun in Ventura County in 1986, honors its most hard-working participants two to four times a year. The program, mandatory for welfare recipients with children over age 3, provides them with education, training and work experience to help them get jobs.

Rivas had dropped out of high school before completing his senior year. He got a job as a roustabout with a Fillmore oil company. He lost it, however, when the company transferred him to Ventura, he said. He couldn’t make the commute because he didn’t have a car.

After they became homeless a year ago Rivas, his wife, Yvette, and her four daughters lived in motels or with friends for four months.

“We went through some hard times,” said Rivas, whose wife gave birth to a boy two months ago.

Meanwhile, his attempts to obtain his general equivalency diploma were sidetracked. He took the exam in May and failed by a small margin, but finally passed in September.

“He has a lot of . . . circumstances which could thwart a lesser person’s efforts to succeed,” Victor H. Crow, a social services caseworker, wrote in his nomination of Rivas.

GAIN’s Job Club taught Rivas how to look for a job, how to dress for interviews, what to say to prospective employers and how to fill out job applications. But he still had no luck getting a job.

Through GAIN he took a job aptitude test and scored high in auto mechanics. Last month he enrolled in auto mechanics classes at Ventura College.