Marnie Jones has conflicting feelings about work for the dole.

The op shop which she has recently opened in Bridgewater on Loddon “wouldn’t be around without it”.

The Helping Hands Mission has restored an abandoned heritage church, provides food for struggling families and has been an injection of positive energy into the town of about 350 people.

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It is good for the participants too, she said, giving them structure, skills and something to go on the CV.

But, Ms Jones said, the $20.88 extra per fortnight they were paid for working up to three days a week, eight hours per day makes her uncomfortable.

“Well it’s pretty much slave labour,” she said.

Despite it, Ms Jones believes in the 25 participants currently on her books. She knows what they are going through – it wasn’t very long ago she was in a similar situation. “I was unemployed for seven weeks and feeling pretty crap about it,” she said.

“It was really quite horrible, it was a real shock.”

The cafe she ran in Lorne closed and Ms Jones suffered a back injury which prevented her from getting another job in hospitality. “I knew I needed to retrain,” she said. Now, armed with a community services diploma, she tries to help others get into the workforce – some for the first time.

Ms Jones mainly takes on ‘stream C' participants, those “facing the greatest barriers” to getting a job.

“The job agencies tend to take on those who are easier to get into the workforce as that gets them more money,” she said.  “Whereas we focus on people who need that little more assistance, who need that hope and faith and someone to `believe in them. And they've been absolutely brilliant, they bring their energy and they bring their ideas.”

Paul Whitfield is one participant with no shortage of ideas – he is currently working on his third self-published science fiction novel.

Mr Whitfield worked for more than a decade as a Mac technician in Bendigo. After the company he worked for changed hands he went freelance. One day he lost his major contract. “I woke up to an email telling me I’d lost $20,000 overnight,” he said.

While the uncertainty of work drove Mr Whitfield onto the dole, the uncertainty of life turned him to the pen.

“I’d a marriage break down and I thought, ‘I want to get creative,” he said.

Mr Whitfield enjoys his time in Bridgewater, he likes doing something positive for the community and he is striving to land a full-time job. In the meantime, Ms Jones argues that he and others in the program need more money, more time and more support to pursue jobs.

Most importantly, she said, they needed to be treated as individuals.