WAGONER, Okla. — Cherokee Nation leaders gathered with Wagoner County officials to cut the ribbon on a new Career Services satellite office in Wagoner on Tuesday.
The new office is located at 109 N. Casaver in downtown Wagoner near the county courthouse.
“I truly believe the most powerful thing the Cherokee Nation can do for its citizens is to give them a platform to achieve their own dreams. Cherokee Nation’s Career Services department is critical to that effort,” said Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. “Career Services provides Cherokee citizens with training opportunities and career assistance. We have strategically placed a number of satellite offices across the Cherokee Nation Reservation to make it as easy as possible for citizens to meet with Career Services and find the assistance they need. I know that if Cherokee Nation provides a foundation for success, the Cherokee people will build something amazing on that foundation. This new office in Wagoner is a big part of that mission.”
Cherokee Nation Career Services will use the new field office to provide services including its Coming Home Re-entry and Justice-Involved programs, tribal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), job training, Talking Leaves Job Corps recruitment, TERO, economic development and other services as needed.
“It is always an honor and a privilege for us to go out into our respective communities of the Cherokee Nation to help serve our citizens. We have quite a number of clients in the Wagoner area, so it really behooves us to be here,” said Career Services Executive Director Diane Kelley. “Wagoner is a thriving community and we’re proud to be a part of it.”
The office in Wagoner is the Cherokee Nation’s ninth Career Services satellite office in the Cherokee Nation Reservation. The department’s main office is located inside the Cherokee Nation W.W. Keeler Tribal Complex in Tahlequah.
“The relationship with our local community and the Cherokee Nation is really good, and it’s good to have those partnerships,” said Wagoner Mayor Albert Jones. “People want to work and need lifeskills. Sometimes, they weren’t able to get those lifeskills in more traditional places growing up, so when they are an adult, what do you do? Right here we have the perfect example of helping them get back to work and giving them the lifeskills that they need.”
Cherokee Nation citizen Tyler Daugherty has participated in the Cherokee Nation Career Services re-entry program and helped to cut the ribbon on the new office space in Wagoner on Tuesday. The Coming Home Re-entry and Justice-Involved program is one service that will be offered through the Wagoner satellite office.
“The re-entry program helped me get reintroduced back into society and gave me the tools and opportunity to go back to school and get certifications,” Daugherty said. “A year ago today I was doing nothing and now I am starting as a salesman for a paper company in Muskogee. So, it really has given me the opportunity to turn my life around.”
In 2019, Chief Hoskin and Deputy Chief Bryan Warner created the Career Readiness Act of 2019 with support from the Council of the Cherokee Nation, doubling the tribe’s funding each year to train Cherokees in areas of construction, health, information technology and lineman trade jobs. Hundreds of Cherokees received vocational assistance through the Career Services department after the signing of the Act.
Then in 2021, Chief Hoskin announced an additional $29 million investment over three years to help Cherokee citizens negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic receive vocational training in skilled trades, as part of the Hoskin-Warner Administration’s theme of “Together: Community, Family, Culture.”
For more information about the many services offered by Cherokee Nation Career Services and a list of Career Service satellite office locations throughout the Reservation, visit https://cherokee.org/all-
The Wagoner satellite office will be open Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with services available by calling and making an appointment at 918-453-5555 or emailing career-services-dept@cherokee.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.