"Unemployed Get A "Facelift""

OHSWEKEN - For the past few weeks, a crew of skilled and unskilled workers have been sprucing up the Six Nations' arena.

They're painting the walls and rejuvenating the boards around the ice as part of a new program at Six Nations called Operation Facelift.

It allows people on social assistance to get some training and work experience while helping the community.

Helen Miller, co-ordinator of the Six Nations, Social Assistance Fund, came up with the idea to fit the mandate of the social assistance fund.

The first project is fixing the dilapidated arena on Fourth Line.

"I want it to be a showcase," said Carl Hill, the project co-ordinator for the arena work.

"It's the only thing that some people see (in Ohsweken)."

The crews are organized so that people with some experience work with those who have few job skills, said Miller.

She and Hill said that because the arena work is a community project, the workers seem to take more pride and are more committed to the work.

A few weeks ago when the work on the boards had to be finished in time for the opening of the Junior B hockey season, the crews worked late nights through the weekend for free to finish.

Already the program is expanding. Miller has sent some workers to help the Grand River Polytech renovate old school portables.

Hill, a welder and out-of-work ironworker, said the work experience that the crews are getting will be enough to start them in the workforce.

But Miller said that raising self-esteem is the most important aspect of the program.

"The first step in getting out of the (welfare) system is going to work," she said.

Workers talk the pleasure of getting up to go to work, she said.

The workers are paid through a reassignment of their social assistance and some extra funding to bring wages to about $350 a week.