It’s no secret that the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) has been busy building tunnels to combat sewer overflow pollution — seven tunnels along Euclid Creek, Doan Brook, Dugway Brook, Cuyahoga River, Big Creek, and Lake Erie, to be exact, as part of Project Clean Lake. But what’s not as well-known is the pipeline of jobs NEORSD is steadily creating via its Good Neighbor Ambassador program.
First launched in 2013, the Good Neighbor Ambassador program is two-fold. It not only more deeply embeds NEORSD in the communities it serves with ambassadors performing site cleanup, maintenance, and beautification, but the program also provides its ambassadors with career development opportunities to put them on the path to sustainable employment. And it’s continuing to gain momentum: right now, the district is recruiting for its ninth ambassador cohort and also held its first-ever job fair in mid-February.
The goal? Opening doors for Clevelanders who may not otherwise be able to make inroads job-wise. “[Typically] there is an experience level or a degree required to come into the sewer district,” explains Crystal Davis, Government Affairs Program Manager for NEORSD. “We have eliminated some of those barriers and created this pipeline so that unemployed and underemployed individuals can have options they wouldn’t normally have.”
Participants work 30 hours weekly (with a pay rate of $14.75/hour) and receive full benefits along with tuition assistance. The program requires that ambassadors be 18 years or older; have a high school diploma or GED; be familiar with Cleveland and its neighborhoods; and, ideally, have a valid driver’s license.
So far, 76 ambassadors have been through the Good Neighbor Ambassador Program—with 18 participants now working at NEORSD full-time and 19 others having found full-time work outside the district. Each cohort lasts one year, providing ambassadors paid work in the field, as well as a chance to develop soft skills such as workplace etiquette, effective listening, and problem-solving.
“More often than not, people are let go [from jobs] not because of what they don’t know technically, but due to what they don’t know professionally or socially,” says Marquita Rockamore, who leads a 12-week course at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) as part of the Good Neighbor Ambassador program. “This program helps expose them to a lot of new information that can help them be successful and advance in the workplace.”
Bridging the gap
When the Good Neighbor Ambassador program first started 10 years ago, its original focus was primarily to act as a positive presence in areas where NEORSD was under active construction for Project Clean Lake (a 25-year initiative aimed at reducing pollution in Lake Erie by 4 billion gallons per year). The ambassadors’ work began in Glenville in tandem with the Dugway Storage Tunnel project, but eventually evolved to include both the east and west sides of Cleveland (including Ohio City, Tremont, and Cleveland Heights).
“The program is the face of the sewer district,” explains Davis. “We want to make sure we’re presenting ourselves in a way of assisting and servicing when we go into those [geographic] areas.”
The ambassador program achieves that by providing community outreach and interaction, as well as general landscaping services such as weeding, mowing lots, tree trimming, leaf pickup, trash removal, and more. Each ambassador is required to work 30 hours per week, plus additional time spent in the 12-week Career Advancement Competitive Edge program (led by Rockamore at Tri-C). Ambassadors also participate in the Reverend Stanley Miller Real Talk program, in which NEORSD brings in community and business leaders to share insights and advice.
“We want the ambassadors to interact with CEOs and executives and learn about their paths,” shares Davis of NEORSD. “What skills might you need to take an entry-level position with one of those organizations or industries? The speakers help them figure that out.”
A whole new world
NEORSD’s Andrea Oslund knows firsthand the positive impact of the Good Neighbor Ambassador program – after all, she was part of Cohort Seven before taking on her full-time role with the district in 2022. Oslund had spent around a decade as a restaurant server and bartender until an ACL injury sidelined her in 2019; she decided to apply for the Good Neighbor Ambassador program after seeing the opportunity on Twitter.
Oslund vividly remembers the time she spent donning steel-toed boots and working alongside the other ambassadors to mow grass, weed-wack, and clear trash from the lots near active construction properties along the Doan Valley Tunnel (which stretches from Shaker Heights to Lake Erie). The team’s Igloo cooler full of Gatorade saw a lot of action due to the summer heat, but Oslund says that they “had a lot of fun and really worked together as a team.”
When not working out in the field, Oslund and the other ambassadors participated in Rockamore’s 12-week certificate program at Tri-C, and after just a few months, she began working as an administrative assistant inside the district. (Many participants are placed in jobs during the year-long duration of the Good Neighbor Ambassador program, rather than at its conclusion.) She now serves as a full-time customer service representative.
“I wanted a career change, but I had no idea how to do it,” shares Oslund in retrospect. “As a server and bartender, you gain a lot of skills, but they’re not the type you need for a job in an office. You can’t just switch into an office [environment] – there has to be that bridge, and that’s what the GNA program was for me.”
To that end, the 12-week Career Advancement Competitive Edge program covers a wide range of topics, from interview preparation to budgeting to resume writing to change resilience—all aimed toward procuring full-time, family-sustaining employment. According to Rockamore, that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of her role: watching ambassadors go on to build better lives for themselves and their families.
“To see a person go from zero income or below a living wage to homeownership, to watch them land jobs and get promoted is incredible,” says Rockamore. “I truly think there should be onboarding like this at all enterprise organizations.”
Learn more about the Good Neighbor Ambassador program here.
Underwriting support for this article was provided by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.
Editor’s note: The locations of NEORSD’s tunnel projects were clarified in the first paragraph.
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