Read this before you apply. Especially the parts that are bad news.
Most places tell you the good parts and let you find the rest out later. Here is everything, in the order that actually matters to you.
Two things we have to say before anything else.
We have to verify work authorization.
Every employer in this country is required by federal law to check that a new hire is authorized to work. We are not an exception, and we are not going to pretend we are. If you are not work-authorized, we cannot put you on payroll — not because we do not want you, but because we would be breaking the law and putting you at risk to do it.
We are telling you this on the recruitment page instead of in an interview, because finding out after you have gotten your hopes up is worse.
Getting help from us never depends on working for us.
If you cannot work here, you can still get everything we offer. The clinic, the forms, the ride, the renewal, the medication paperwork. All of it. For free. Forever.
We will never make you earn help. We will never pay you in credits or vouchers or medication. If anyone ever tells you otherwise, they do not speak for us.
What you would actually do all day
No mystery. This is the whole thing.
Knock on doors on your own block
Talk to people. In Spanish, or whatever language you and they share. You are not selling anything and you are not collecting money. You are finding people who are sick, or scared, or about to lose their coverage and do not know it.
Tell them one true thing
“The clinic will see you. They will not ask for papers. They will not ask for insurance. They will not turn you away.” That is the whole pitch. It happens to be true, and almost nobody has said it to them.
Walk them there
Not a phone number. Not a flyer. You go with them, the first time, because the first time is the one that stops people.
Do the paperwork
Sliding-scale applications. Medi-Cal renewals. Medication assistance forms. Hospital financial assistance — which can erase a bill entirely and which almost nobody knows exists. It is boring, it is in English, it takes an afternoon, and it is worth thousands of dollars to the person sitting next to you.
Chase the second appointment
This is the unglamorous part and it is most of the job. Almost everyone disappears between the first visit and the second. You are the reason they come back.
In money. By the hour. Like a job, because it is one.
W-2, hourly, on the books
You are an employee, not a contractor. That means payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, and health coverage — the real thing, not a stipend. We do not use 1099s for this work. The law does not allow it and it would strip your protections.
No quotas. No commission. Ever.
Your pay does not depend on how many people you sign up, how much money anyone donates, or how many doors you knock. Nobody here is paid a cut of anything. If your paycheck depended on hitting a number, you would start pressuring your own neighbors, and we would deserve what happened next.
Paid in dollars, full stop
Not credits. Not vouchers. Not medication. Not points toward anything. Money, on a schedule, that you spend on whatever you want without telling us. It is yours.
You probably already have it.
What matters
You live here. You know which building has the family that just lost someone. No
outsider can learn that.
You speak the language. Spanish is close to essential. Mam, K’iche’,
Q’anjob’al, Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao — if you speak one of these, tell us
immediately. We need you more than you think.
You are stubborn. The job is calling someone a fourth time about an appointment they
keep avoiding.
People trust you. That is the entire product and it cannot be trained.
What does not matter
A degree. None required. California lets you become a certified community health
worker through 2,000 hours of experience — your hours here count toward it.
Experience. We train you.
Perfect English. The people you are helping do not speak perfect English
either.
Your own history. If you have been sick, been broke, been afraid to walk into a
clinic — that is not a gap in your resume. That is the qualification. California
certifies and pays peer specialists specifically for having lived it.
What we will never ask you to do
These are promises to you, not policies for us.
Never pretend to be a doctor.
You will not diagnose, you will not advise, you will not decide if something is serious. You write down what you see and a nurse or physician takes it from there. This protects your neighbor and it protects you — from a mistake that could follow you for life.
Never ask anyone for money on the street.
Navigators do not fundraise. That is a different job, done by different people, on an hourly wage, in a different part of the county. You will never be asked to stand on a corner.
Never ask about immigration status.
Not your neighbors’. Not ever. We do not record it and we do not want it. If anyone asks you for it, the answer is that we do not have it.
Never trade someone’s story for a donation.
You will not be asked to photograph a sick neighbor, collect their story for a fundraising page, or hand their name to a donor. If we ever ask a face to appear on our fundraising, it will be a staff member’s, and only if they say yes.
This is a ladder, not a gig.
Outreach worker → community health worker (certified, and the state pays for that work) → peer specialist (certified on lived experience) → navigator lead → and if you want it, tuition support toward nursing or social work licensure.
The intent is that the people who run this eventually own it — as a worker cooperative, where the people doing the work hold the enterprise doing it. That is not something we can promise on a webpage yet. It is what we are building toward, and you should hold us to it. See the full ladder →
We are not hiring yet.
We are in formation and not yet funded. There is no job to apply for today, and we are not going to collect applications for jobs that do not exist.
Get the first call
Tell us who you are and what you speak. When hiring opens, we work down this list before we post anywhere else. People from the Canal come first.
Volunteer
Renewal outreach, translation, paperwork. Real work, today, no funding required. It is also how we get to know each other before anyone signs anything.
Tell us we are wrong
If you live here and think this is naive, or that someone already does it, or that we are the wrong people — say so. That is worth more to us than a resume.