West Corporation Partners with Disabled Veterans Group to Provide Jobs

West Corporation, a leading provider of outsourced communication solutions, announces a work at home partnership with CORA (Creating Opportunities by Recognizing Abilities), a leading not- for-profit organization specializing in providing career opportunities for disabled American veterans and their families.

West’s award-winning West at Home program will launch the partnership with CORA via a pilot program. The pilot program will allow disabled veterans to operate as certified customer service representatives through the West at Home platform. The award-winning work at home model developed by West currently has 262 disabled veterans working as contracted agents, and gives veterans the freedom to prepare their own schedules and work from the comfort of their homes.

"We at CORA, are thrilled to partner with one of the world’s leading customer contact solution providers; West Corporation," says Ms. Ilene Morris- Sambur, CORA CEO and Founder. West has joined forces with CORA as a Telework Pilot Program to help make a difference for our severely wounded soldiers and military spouses by providing the option of immediate work at home opportunities. "These military families are going through enough stress learning to live with a disability. The least we can do is provide opportunities that can decrease the financial burden many of these families are experiencing," says Ms. Morris-Sambur.

CORA is led and founded by Ilene Morris-Sambur, who was recognized on October 26 by Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao as the 2006 New Freedom Initiative Award individual winner. The award is presented to the person who successfully demonstrates exemplary and innovative efforts to recruit, hire and promote people with disabilities and incorporates the principles of President George W. Bush’s New Freedom Initiative into the workplace. The West at Home partnership is part of these efforts, and only one individual award is issued each year.

The work at home pilot model being used by CORA and West is a scaleable design and has the ability to provide career opportunities to veterans who may not have had other employment options available.

<!–PAGEBREAK–>  

"West works directly with veterans every day to provide career opportunities," said Mark Lavin, President of West Teleservices. "Our program with CORA demonstrates that our remote work force, West at Home, can provide new opportunities to those men and women who proudly risked their lives in honor of our country."

West at Home is one of the world’s largest providers of work at home agents with more than 12,000 agents actively working. Last month, West at Home was awarded the Hall of Fame Award from the Telework Coalition for using over 1,000 work at home agents to collect more than $75 million in support of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Many of the 12,000 agents are stay-at-home mothers, disabled Americans and retirees who are taking customer service and order processing calls for some of the most well-known corporations in the country. The work at home model also helps keep jobs in the U.S. rather than outsourced to off-shore locations.