It’s been seven years since the IMAN Career Development Initiative, (ICDI) opened its doors to provide basic computer literacy training to residents of Marquette Park and the surrounding community.
After years of dedicated volunteers, ICDI now has its first full time coordinator, Veronica Zapata, who is restructuring the ICDI program and putting more emphasis on instructor training, career opportunities and the educational interests and needs of the students.
“Our instructors are our link to the community and we want to make sure they’re reaching our students’ needs,” said Zapata. “We’re not trying to put our students in a box at ICDI. Each student is an individual with specific needs and we’re catering to those needs.”
ICDI offers a five-week curriculum, both in English and Spanish, teaches resume and application writing, interviewing skills, Internet job search, and access to a job bank – all within the context of computer literacy. Individual attention and support help participants gain not only useful skills, but also the self-esteem to go out in the business world and gain successful employment. According to Zapata, recent surveys found out that 50% of students at ICDI are unemployed while the other half, have physically demanding positions and want to change careers. Ninety-eight percent of ICDI’s student population, however, did not go to college and a majority of the Spanish-speaking students did not finish high school.
“It’s these factors that cause fear and apprehension in a classroom setting,” said Zapata. “That’s what where trying to eliminate.” |
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In order to provide a welcoming environment for both instructors and students, ICDI is committed to training its instructors and providing them with skills to not only teach but help build students confidence.
“Our teachers don’t stress regular assessments and daily tests and quizzes,” said Zapata. “That’s not what were offering. We want our students, many who aren’t used to the classroom, to thrive.”
To better ensure that students also successfully thrive in the competitive job market, ICDI plans to offer medical billing and coding courses. The practice of medical billing and coding is not only necessary to health care providers, but also to health insurance companies.
Qualified medical billing and coding specialists are crucial and increasingly in demand in the health care field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, careers in Health Information Technology will see rapid growth through 2014.
ICDI is committed to certifying students in Medical Billing, Network & Security and HIPAA Compliance, guaranteed internship opportunities and finally assisting students in job placement at various physicians’ offices throughout Chicago.
“Offering this certification compliments our career development initiative and really helps people find jobs,” said Zapata. “There is so much to look forward to at ICDI and we want our community to know that.” |
