Marlon Moore’s West End Career Fair saw over 70 participants from around the community attend, seeking jobs Wednesday morning.

The event featured a wide variety of businesses and organizations, including businesses providing on-site training for maintenance and offshore work, sales and in-home elderly and disabled care. Both the city and parish governments established booths looking for fresh workers. The Iberia Parish Sheriff’s office also established a booth looking for prison guards and patrol officers.

Ernest P. Breaux Electrical Group was an employer offering many job opportunities. According to Jacob Mayeux, the group’s hiring coordinator, working at the electrical group can lead to a lengthy career and they offer training to over 60 people they plan to hire every year. People with zero experience can move from unemployed to a career in a year. They aren’t alone, as most, if not all the businesses and organizations attending didn’t require any prior experience and offered on-site training and educational programs. Even SLCC was offering scholarships on the spot to people with a high school diploma or a GED.

Marlon Moore was raised underprivileged in Crowley, Louisiana, and wanted to attend law school to become a defense attorney, but his family couldn’t afford it. So when he went to school and received his master’s degree in public administration from McNeese State University, he wanted to find a way to give back to communities like his own. He never expected it to reach the level he saw on the day of the event. Initially, Moore limited the businesses attending, but ultimately decided against it, opting to pair businesses together at tables.

“I started getting all these phone calls saying, ‘I want to participate, I want to participate,’ as late as last night. So I had to double them up on the tables,” Moore said.

Moore wanted to thank several people for making the event happen. Chief among them is New Iberia District 2 City Councilman Marlon Lewis, who Moore initially contacted with the idea. Lewis helped Moore secure the building and the date for the career fair. Beyond Lewis, however, Moore worked with many others including the employers, the city and the parish to assemble the event. Moore said he is excited to see how the community has come together.

“This is not a Marlon thing. This is a community thing, because without members of the community, there would be no job fair, without employers in the community, there would be no job fair. What you see is nothing but collaborations,” Moore said

Many people thanked Moore for putting on the career fair because they were unsure of where to find jobs for themselves. Much of the hiring market is digital, but according to a study conducted by Pew Research Center in 2021, 43% of US adults don’t have broadband internet access while 41% don’t own a personal computer of any kind. Millions of Americans, especially those in poverty, can’t use the internet as a job resource, so physical events are key to helping them find employment.

Moore said he wants to see the event continue to expand and repeat to give the disenfranchised people of New Iberia a chance to find employment and build a potential career for themselves, but may decide to move the location in the future. While proximity to underprivileged communities is a benefit of the MLK Recreation Center, it lacks adequate parking and space to expand the event.