Giving youth a second chance

Giving youth a second chance

	From left: Allan Greenblatt, Elisabeth Kutter, Phyllis McConnachie and Jim Wright

Launched in 1970 by the Bank of Montreal, an organization called EPOC (Education, Placement, Orientation and Communication) has long been helping Montreal school dropouts acquire the skills and education necessary to enter the job market and become autonomous members of society. The project is aimed at young adults from 18 to 30 years of age.

"All of our participants qualify for either welfare or employment insurance," says Jim Wright, BA'65, a member of McGill's Board of Governors who recently joined EPOC as its executive director. "These are all young people who've had a rough time in life," he says. "Some come from broken homes, some have been abused."

EPOC prepares participants for office and technical trade work, providing education, on-the-job-training through their corporate partners, and job-hunting skills, as well as offering counselling services for personal problems.

"We help them upgrade their computer, math, accounting and language skills and give them experience through the on-site training," says Wright.

With Quebec secondary school dropout rates today reaching approximately 35%, the need for a program like EPOC is even more vital than when it was founded. The program is funded through Emploi Québec, as well as private and corporate donors (the Bank of Montreal remains a strong supporter). Since its origins, EPOC has seen over 3,500 of its students become economically self-sufficient. With more than 85% of the people it helps going on to full-time jobs or back to high school, CEGEP or university, EPOC's success rate is something that understandably gives Wright and his colleagues a great deal of pride and satisfaction.

And as a McGill grad, Wright is not alone at EPOC, with six other alumni involved in the organization: they are Douglas Pryde, BCL'63 (EPOC President), Susan Kirby-Jones, BCom'81, David Tarr, BA'61, Alan Greenblatt, MEd'95, Phyllis McConnachie, MEd'83, and Elisabeth Kutter, BA'72, MEd'75.

Kutter, who has been a counsellor with EPOC for 25 years, says her job involves "doing everything from teaching English or math to counselling in terms of spousal abuse or childrearing, to program development and fundraising.

"We show the students how to write a killer CV, give them intensive software training, and provide them with job-search strategies to get through the 'receptionist block' to the human resources department. Their on-the-job training is important and can lead to full-time employment. It can be very hard for people to get that first job, and it helps get their foot in the door."

Kutter says "80 to 90 companies now actively support EPOC." Some are large corporate donors, but there are "a lot of smaller companies that offer services through stage placements for our students, which is also a significant contribution."

Noble Roster a splendid effort

If you love lawyers - and who doesn't - have we got a book for you. Called A Noble Roster, it was put together by doctoral candidate Ian Pilarczyk, BA'92, LLM'97, to mark the 150th anniversary of McGill's Faculty of Law. Pilarczyk, who wrote much of the text and combed archival material for excerpts from other publications, points out that the faculty is older than the country, and its graduates helped shape Canada, "producing between 1854 and 1864, for example, two Prime Ministers and a Father of Confederation: John Abbott, Wilfrid Laurier and Thomas d'Arcy McGee."

Pilarczyk says he and his editorial advisors wanted to produce a work that was "lighthearted but which had something for everyone." The successful result is 150 pages of fascinating — and often funny — memoirs, profiles, articles and first-person accounts of important and silly moments in the faculty's history. There are even poems, some of them doggerel, and song lyrics scattered through the seven chapters. Pilarczyk says that "the schedule was gruelling" since he was also teaching a large lecture class for the first time and trying to work on his thesis, "but I learned a lot, and looking back, it was a good experience." A Noble Roster can be found at the McGill Bookstore or ordered through the Faculty of Law by calling (514) 398-1435.