Forty Years Ago

By Terry Flood
Jubilee Jobs Co-Founder and first Executive Director

In June 1981, a small group of residents from Jubilee Housing in Adams Morgan, which called itself a Committee of Compassion, gathered to talk about what they needed in addition to their affordable apartments. Health care was first. They said that if you have your health, you can take care of the rest of life. Jobs were next. “What about starting an employment agency for us— to find unskilled and semi-skilled jobs?” suggested Hercules Mintz, a Committee member from the Ritz apartments.

The idea to form a job placement organization quickly grew when Fred Bradley came to the Jubilee Housing Resident Services office to pick up food he needed, and said, “What I really need is a job.”  With guidance from Ann Schuurman, an employment agency owner visiting from Chicago, the group decided to see if her job placement process could help Fred find work. Sure enough, he had three job offers in three weeks! Hearing through the grapevine, others came wanting employment too. The need was real.

With the Committee of Compassion as the Board of Directors and Terry Flood as Executive Director, the Committee decided to call this new endeavor Jubilee Jobs. Work for Sustenance, Dignity and Hope became the Jubilee Jobs motto. There were three principles that remain today:

1) Focus exclusively on placing anyone needing and wanting a job in an appropriate entry-level job as quickly as possible.

2) Give all who come a warm welcome, believing that everyone has within a core of goodness.

3) Provide all services free to applicants and employers.

Using a special fund set up by Jim Rouse on the occasion of his retirement from the Rouse Company, the Committee hired a full-time job counselor, Maeola Herring. Her job was to place 100 people in jobs in one year. With a desk, two chairs and a telephone, she worked from an office shared with Jubilee Housing and found jobs for 96 people that first year.  

We thought we were an emergency program during the recession of 1981. Forty years later, Jubilee Jobs has placed over 27,000 people in jobs and has been recognized as “one of the best” small non-profits in the Greater Washington, DC area.