Job fair for felons draws huge crowds

March 5th, 2010 - 10:52 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

joab Houston, Mar 5 (THAINDIAN NEWS) There was a job fair for the convicted felons in Houston, Texas. And the job fair was a resounding success, as more than 3000 people turned up. The job fair was aptly named as the ‘Road to Re-entry Employment Fair’, and was designed to aid those people who have a criminal background find a job, as per their skills.

The organizers of the ‘Road to Re-entry Employment Fair’ said that they wanted to find suitable jobs for people who have a criminal background and help them to reintegrate into the society, which mostly treats them with scorn. The organizers were quite shocked by the turnout, and witnesses said that the line of job-seekers was a huge one, and it also held up the traffic in that area.” These were not individuals trying to get concert tickets or a free dinner,” according to Jarvis Johnson, who is a Houston City Council member who helped sponsor the inaugural event. “They were individuals who were waiting in line because they want to be productive members of society.”

“I’m an ex-con, and that’s the main thing that’s holding me back,” Lavell Byrd (who has a criminal background) said. “It’s a very, very, very hard thing that people still look at what you did in the past and not what you can do in the future.”

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