Special breakfast program geared to offer tips to the unemployed

By John Shaughnessy

Jim Liston taps into his own anguish as he plans an event that he hopes will help people who have lost their jobs during the continuing economic crisis.

Liston remembers the devastating time when he lost his job and was unemployed for six months—a time in his life when his first child was an infant and he struggled to pay the mortgage on his family’s house.

“That has always stayed with me, how debilitating it can be,” Liston says, recalling that period in 1993. “From your checkbook to your relationship with your spouse to your identity, there’s a huge impact on your life. There’s a lot of stress and strife. And you’re worrying how it’s all going to work out. Ever since then, I’ve had a deep empathy for people out of work. And now, we’re reaching new levels of the crisis. I’ve never seen it this bad.”

Hoping to help, Liston has organized a free event on May 15 that will offer 200 unemployed Catholics a free breakfast as they learn tips for improving their job prospects from a panel of employment experts.

The event is an extension of the Catholic Business Exchange, a group that Liston founded five years ago to let Catholic women and men in the Indianapolis area share their common faith and their interest in business.

The event will be held at the north side Knights of Columbus at 2100 E. 71st St. in Indianapolis. It will begin with Mass at 6:30 a.m. and end by 8:30 a.m.

“We’re going to have Mass because that’s the centerpiece of our activity,” says Liston, a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianapolis. “After that, we’ll have some time for networking, we’ll have food, we’ll have the panel, and we’ll have time for questions and answers. We’ll have a lot of information that people can take home with them, too.”

The event is not a job fair, Liston says. Still, he encourages business owners and employment recruiters who have openings to attend.

The panel members at the event will offer tips ranging from looking for a job to preparing for interviews. A special emphasis of the program is “keeping the faith in your job search.”

Liston hopes the event will spark efforts by parishes and deaneries to help people who are unemployed.

“All parishes have families who are hurting,” he says. “I feel that every Catholic parish is in a pivotal, positive position to offer some sort of support group, even if it’s a deanery effort. We have to activate our parishes to help with this situation. Parishioners who are career specialists or in human resources could lead the group.”

The event is being co-sponsored by Indiana Business College and Chick-fil-A, which is providing 200 breakfasts free of charge. Registration for the event will end when 200 people have signed up, Liston says. He also noted that the only way to register for the event is through the Web site, www.CatholicBusinessExchange.org.

No walk-ins will be admitted.

“If we can make the journey less painful, if we can prepare them better for that next interview, we will have helped them in a small way to get back to getting a paycheck,” Liston says. †