This news release may be of interest to anyone who is interested in a sustainable mode of employment in Eastern Kentucky:

Distance Earning Telework Forum planned for Stanton
STANTON – Have you ever wanted the ultimate work-life balance, a rewarding career working from the comfort of your own home, or wished you could utilize your education and work experience to its fullest potential?

The Eastern Kentucky Distance Earning Initiative will sponsor a free Telework Forum at the Powell County Library, located at 725 Breckenridge Street in Stanton, Ky., at 6 p.m., Wednesday, February 16, 2011. This free event will highlight a new and innovative job creation plan in Eastern Kentucky. Participants can learn about the thousands of telework career opportunities and receive information on the Distance Earning initiatives skills inventory, which it plans to roll out in the coming months to target large scale telework job creation across the region.

Sponsored by a consortium of Kentucky Community and Technical College (KCTCS) member schools, businesses and the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP), the Eastern Kentucky Distance Earning Initiative is an aggressive economic development strategy that aims to bring sustainable wage jobs that can be performed at home or from a business incubator.

“Work is no longer a place you go, it’s something you do,” said

Joshua Ball, who coordinates the program for KCTCS. “This program is not about job creation, it is about creating opportunities for Eastern Kentuckians to work for progressive and innovative companies that are leading the charge to compete in the global marketplace.”

There are currently thousands of jobs available in a variety of different fields like: data entry, clerical, medical transcription and coding, IT support, computer programming, sales, tutoring and teaching, and a variety of management.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 8 million people worked from home in 2005. Companies like IBM, Dell, American Express and Lockheed Martin have employees who telework.

“Even during a time when jobs are scarce, IBM has over 2,000 telework opportunities available,” Ball added. “This strategy helps eliminate some of our region’s greatest barriers when it comes to job creation: geography and infrastructure.”
Interested individuals will receive free resume and interview coaching. Additionally, they will receive twice-a-week telework job postings emails from the program.

“It’s critical that we do everything we can to link our talented workforce to the many telework jobs that are available,” Ball said. “We know that that there are a lot of people looking for work, and a large number of talented workers who are underemployed.”

The Eastern Kentucky Distance Earning Initiative will roll out phase 2 of its plan in the coming months: a proactive blitz to use a skills inventory taken from forums held across the region to form partnerships with national companies to develop a pipeline to our workforce.

Companies across the globe are seeing the vast benefits to telework. Studies suggest that employees who work from home are more productive and tend to miss work less. It also has massive benefits to the environment. According to the Telework Exchange, if white-collar Americans would telework just one day a week, they would avoid driving 134 billion miles, eliminate 120 tons of pollutants from the air and save nearly $162 billion.

For more information about the program, contact Ball at (606) 487-3205 or 800-246-7521, ext. 73205.