Following the July 2002 Committee Meeting, members of the NISH Board of Directors and the Committee staff visited ServiceSource, Inc., in Alexandria, VA. In addition to listening to a presentation by Janet Samuelson, Executive Director, these visitors were treated to a personal tour of the spacious and well-organized facilities.

ServiceSource, Inc., established in 1972 as Fairfax Opportunities Unlimited, provides quality labor solutions to commercial and government sectors in Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The organization has an excellent track record for recruitment, training, placement, and on-site management.

During the 2002 fiscal year, ServiceSource supported approximately 1,800 people with disabilities, an increase of 27 percent over FY01, and employed 742 employees at over 60 Federal and commercial sites in the mid-Atlantic and South. Also in FY 02, ServiceSource obtained 12 new contracts and added 97 positions to its Javits-Wagner-O'Day (JWOD) contract list. ServiceSource is the largest community rehabilitation program in Virginia, as well as one of the fifty largest employers in Fairfax County, Virginia with a range of business services that includes: mail center management; full food service operations; groundskeeping and custodial support, digital document imaging and scanning; copy center operations; shipping, receiving, and warehouse operations; and clerical, data entry, and administrative support.

Under the JWOD Program, ServiceSource's Federal contracts include: 1) the management of mailroom operations for ten Federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Department of Commerce; JWOD employees deliver to more than 1,800 mail stops, serving over 70,000 employees, and process more than 30 million pieces of mail annually; 2) full food service operations for the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force; JWOD employees provide daily cooking, cleaning, and mess attendant services to 21 dining facilities serving over 1.3 million meals per year; and 3) certified distribution of U.S. Marine Corps Medical Bags; JWOD employees have assembled over 5,000 Medical Bags, which are used by medics in the USMC and other service branches to treat front-line casualties in military operations. And, its 40,000 square foot warehouse facilitates the agency's storage, fulfillment, and delivery needs for the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Mint.

One of ServiceSource's latest projects, in partnership with Computer Donation Management, Inc., is called Keep It Green, which specializes in protecting the environment by recycling all types and conditions of collected computer hardware, terminals, monitors, cables, and related accessories. After inspecting the equipment, Keep It Green either refurbishes the item, dismantles select parts for reassembly in other systems, or disposes of items that cannot be recycled in accordance with state and federal environmental guidelines. As no materials are landfilled, this program helps decrease the thousands of computers that are thrown into landfills annually, which in turn adds several million pounds of garbage and toxic waste to regions' disposal systems.

For more information on Keep It Green, call Lisa Ward at (703) 461-6142. For more information about ServiceSource, Inc., visit www.ourpeoplework.org or email David Misra, Communications Manager, at dmisra@ourpeoplework.org