Community Service Aids In-plant

“Because we’re a two-person shop, we’re limited in what we’re able to accomplish,” acknowledges Richard Showers, printing supervisor for the city of Longmont, Colo. Jobs tend to back up, he adds.

To ease the burden, Showers came up with a unique solution 10 years ago. Knowing that law breakers were often sentenced to perform community service, he proposed letting them carry out that service by helping in the city in-plant. His small staff would get a helping hand (without owing wages) and the mostly youthful offenders would learn a little about printing. The idea was a hit.

Today, those sentenced to community service in the in-plant are assigned small jobs like padding, hand collating or copying. In the process, they observe the shop in operation.

“We’ll show them what a print shop does,” Showers says. “We treat them with such respect, and we get that in return too.” By accepting them as coworkers, teaching them and supporting their efforts, he feels he improves their self esteem. Some have been so impressed they have asked for a job.

Showers says the shop gets about 200 hours of help a year through this program.

“It really helps us a lot to have somebody come in and be able to do some of that work,” he says.

The benefits go beyond just printing, though.

“It can’t help but make the community a better place,” he says.

—By Bob Neubauer