Helpful Winter Tips!

I received an email the other day with some neat tips to make life a little easier this winter season. Here they are!

Keep your headlights clear with car wax - Just wipe ordinary car wax on your headlights, rub it in and wipe off the excess. It contains special water repellents that will prevent that messy mixture from accumulating on your lights - lasts 6 weeks.

Squeak-proof your wipers with rubbing alcohol - Wipe the wipers with a cloth saturated with rubbing alcohol or ammonia. This one trick can make badly streaking & squeaking wipers change to near perfect silence & clarity.

Ice-proof your windows with vinegar! Send Frost on its way - Just fill a spray bottle with three parts vinegar to one part water & sprits it on all your windows at night. In the morning, they'll be clear of icy mess. Vinegar contains acetic acid, which raises the melting point of water---preventing water from freezing!

Prevent car doors from freezing shut with cooking spray - Spray cooking oil on the rubber seals around car doors & rub it in with a paper towel. The cooking spray prevents water from melting into the rubber.

Fog-proof your windshield with shaving cream - Spray some shaving cream on the inside of your windshield & wipe if off with paper towels. Shaving cream has many of the same ingredients found in commercial defoggers.

De-ice your lock in seconds with hand sanitizer - Just put some hand sanitizer gel on the key & the lock & the problems solved!

Source: Waikem

Labor Market Info. and Education

When I decided to further my education, I chose to study something I love. The problem is that the demand for French majors is not very high. I ended up having to go back and take classes on accounting, trying to get a better job.

I learned about using Labor Market Information (LMI) when I was a Veteran Rep. (11 years too late to help me with school). It is an excellent tool to help you decide which jobs/careers are going to be in the most demand when you finish. It also tells you the average salary and how much training is needed.

Take, for example, this list of the fastest growing occupations which projects out to 2018. If you follow the link, you will find the top 50 fastest growing occupations. This can help you decide what field to pursue depending on your goals. For example, if my goal were to get a job quickly, I might look into becoming a home health aid or personal/home care aid as they require the least training and appear to have the most actual job openings.

You can also use it to look up the specific career you are interested in. You can go to the Occupation Profile page, type in the job you are interested in or choose from the list, choose your state, and viola! It gives you information about it on both the national and state level. If you look at the wage comparison for a“financial examiner”, you can see what wages are for Ohio and nationally in the same table.

The profile will also tell you employment trends; knowledge, skills, and abilities needed; tasks and activities you will likely perform; tools and technology used; education and training needed; and related occupations. These occupation profiles are very complete and give a solid idea of what to expect in each occupation.

Labor Market Information is a useful tool to help you choose the most lucrative field that matches your interests. I will be happy to help any individual or group navigate through and use this information. Just let me know by sending me an email c4canne@gmail.com or calling me at (937) 260-1985.

Using Labor Market Info. in Your Job Search

With the recent economic downturn, many people in the area have become unemployed. Unfortunately, many of the jobs that were lost are not coming back. I have met many people in their forties and fifties who never thought they’d be unemployed at this stage of life. Sometimes the skills they have are not the skills employers are looking for. So, what is a person supposed to do in this changing environment? Maybe you want to go back to school to learn new skills. Perhaps you are not in a position to retrain, but aren’t sure what skills you can transfer into a new position.

There are resources that can help and one of the best I’ve found is CareerOneStop . It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, and it has almost all the information one would need to make a career or job change.

Today, let’s start with finding a new career that matches the skills you already have. This site has a great tool to help with just such a scenario. If you click on the link above, you will find a menu listed on the right side of the webpage. In the middle of the list is a link called “Skills Center”. The first section of the skills center is “Asses Your Skills”, and you can identify what skills you currently have and what jobs need those skills. Just click on the “Identify Your Skills Using The Skills Profiler” and then you can either start with a job or start with the skills assessment. Take some time to measure what skills you already have and what the demand is for those skills.

Don’t be discouraged if it says there are no jobs that match your skills. (That’s what happened to me when I tried.) If it says this, you can look at the various jobs and it will list the skills needed and those you have. If you think a little more, you may realize you missed some of your skills. At any rate, it is a useful research tool and can give you some very useful information.

Tip: When determining what skills you already have, be sure to think of non-employment related skills that may help you. If you’ve done any volunteer work or served in the military, be sure to consider the skills you’ve gained there.

You can use all the skills you’ve developed over your lifetime, not just skills related directly to your previous employment. Perhaps you volunteer as a coach for your child’s sports team. There are skills you develop there like leadership. If you are in charge of the equipment inventory, you can use that skill (inventory control) on your resume. Think outside the box and use everything you’ve learned through your lifetime. It might help to make a list of all of your skills and where you acquired them.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, there is a section called “Skills Shortage”. Take a look to see if you have any of the skills needed. If you have some of the needed skills, but need training for some, it may be in your best interest to go back to school. We’ll talk more about retraining next time.

For now, I encourage to you visit the website and asses the skills you have and compare them to the skills area employers need.

Reference:

http://www.careeronestop.org/lmi/lmihome.asp - Labor Market Information

C4C Dayton Community Survey Available Online!

Our community survey is now available online. Please follow this link  https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHdRdmVGREhOeTBMaTB4aHNjUWF5amc6MA to complete one.

This Google.docs thing is pretty cool. It let me do the survey questions and when you answer, it puts that on a spreadsheet for me automatically! Woot!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Eat and be thankful.

Abandoned Houses a Big Problem

Happy Monday, All!

I have been looking over the Community Surveys that were done last spring in the Westwood area, which is where we are focusing our efforts.

The majority of the surveys indicate that abandoned homes and the messes that come from them are the biggest immediate problems that need to be dealt with. A place for kids to play came in second place as a major concern of the residents.

We'd like to hear from YOU!

1.  What do you think can be done to remedy this problem?

2.  If the abandoned properties were demolished, what would you like to see in their place?

3. What suggestions can you give regarding making a safe place for kids to play?

Thank you in advance for your ideas!

Volunteer Application for Real!

Thanks to this blog, attatching the Volunteer Application was easy. Google.docs, who knew?

So, now if you like, you can access the Volunteer Application here .

The Community Survey will be posted sometime on Sunday. Have a great weekend!

Volunteer Application

We've been putting in a lot of hours here at C4C Dayton this week. We have been doing a lot of research and networking. Things are progressing nicely and rapidly!

We have developed a new Volunteer Application and are almost finished with our Community Survey form. We will be putting them both up on this site sometime tonight. (I must admit I'm not the best at this computer stuff and I am having a hard time figuring out how to attach the files here).

Once they are both up on this site, please feel free to complete and turn one or both of them in. You can even just put the answers to the questions in an email and send it to C4CAnne@gmail.com . Thank you for checking back with us and for your support and well-wishes!

Citizens 4 Change Dayton - Progress Report

We’re back!! Citizens 4 Change Dayton has been a little quiet lately because we have been restructuring our organization and leadership. We are up and running again and eager to get back to work. Citizens 4 Change Dayton wants to hear your voice in the matter! Please feel free to send us an email or fill out a community survey online.

A note from the Director:

My name is Anne Moore and I am the new Director of C4C Dayton. I’d like to take this time to report our recent progress and immediate plans.

On Thursday, I met with Mayor Leitzell to introduce myself and discuss Citizens 4 Change Dayton. We spent some time discussing Dayton’s economic situation and the difficulties the city faces as a result. He spoke about some of the frustrations that citizens have voiced and we talked a great deal about the various neighborhoods and how each is doing. We discussed plans to resume our work in Westwood and Southwest Dayton, and he suggested Northwest Dayton as another area where we may be able to help.  All in all, the meeting went well and I look forward to working with City Hall as we progress.

In the coming weeks, I will be attending meetings of both the Northwest and Southwest Priority Boards. I will also be spending some time introducing myself to the friends of the organization, thanking our supporters, and meeting new people who have expressed an interest in working with us.

Citizens 4 Change Dayton will hold its first public meeting of the New Year at the Downtown Dayton Library on January 8, 2011 from 1-3 pm. Please be sure to RSVP at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=110992672301538 if you will be attending.

I look forward to our work and am thankful to be a part of an organization I truly believe in.

Yours Truly,

Anne Moore