Photo Above: Tammara’s job training maintained core elements of Climb’s model developed over the past 35 years while innovating in new ways to provide services during the pandemic.

Tammara, a mother of three, graduated from Climb’s Medical Assistant training in Casper this year. Climb adapted her program to offer virtual group and individual counseling, parenting classes, and mock interviews. Clinical classes that required practicing hands-on skills, like drawing blood or learning specialized medical software, were taught in person with masks and other safety precautions in place.

In response to the pandemic, Climb has leveraged and adapted the best of our tools developed over the past 35 years to continue job trainings for Tammara and other Wyoming families that need us.

“I graduated from high school in 1989, when there was no such thing as the internet,” says Tammara, who is 50 and worked in food service for more than a decade before Climb. “When I started the program and sat in front of a computer for the first time, I thought, ‘I really have to use one of these things?’”

“I’m absolutely where I’m supposed to be because Climb was there for me this past year.”

-Tammara, Climb Wyoming Graduate

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When Tammara needed some extra support partway through the program, she was glad that her group connected virtually with each other and Climb’s therapist each week. This structure helped her build the executive functioning skills she needed to be successful on the job. “With the group’s support,” Tammara says, “I moved through it.”

Today, you’d never guess that Tammara was intimidated by technology. She’s in her Climb job placement as a Medical Assistant in Behavioral Health at the Community Health Center of Central Wyoming, where she uses her new computer skills to check in and schedule patients, prep charts, and update records. “I’m absolutely where I’m supposed to be because Climb was there for me this past year,” she says. “Behavioral health is so important, and people are really hurting right now. I’m so grateful that I have the job skills to help.”

35 Years in the Making: Climb Program Model