| Coming Up |
Registration is now open for the 2012 Good Jobs, Green Jobs Midwest Regional Conference in Detroit, MI on May 10-11. CSW is proud to be a convener of this conference, which will explore ways that clean technologies can continue to be manufactured in the Midwest and how cleaner, more efficient cars may revitalize the auto industry. To register, click here.
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Recent Publication
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Job Creation: Entrepreneurship Approaches
CSW authored a paper that offers policy guidelines for supporting community-based job creation partnerships to address unmet market needs left by traditional approaches to economic and workforce development. These ideas were developed over years of working with industry sector partnerships across the nation, and from recent work in Detroit, Michigan. The full paper has now been released as part of the University of California Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor & Employment's set of papers collected under the banner, "Big Ideas for Job Creation."
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Reinventing One-Stop Career Centers to Meet Today's Labor Market Realities
Since our founding, CSW has been deeply involved in articulating the need for centers at which job seekers and employers could obtain reliable help in navigating labor markets and learning opportunities. Throughout the development of the one-stop system across the nation during the 1990s, we led in defining what a high quality one-stop career center system could be and then in diffusing and developing that model and its variants nationally, both through technical assistance and benchmarking research. The result of those efforts was the creation of a subset of one-stops that deliver excellent advising and service brokering to their customers.
Today, CSW is leading a call for a rethinking of the federal investment in one-stops and proposing ways to reframe the purpose of, approach to, and funding for these services to replace a model that is rapidly becoming obsolete. The world is changing rapidly, but workforce development strategies and structures are not. The current one-stop delivery system was designed for a very different labor market than we have two decades later.
We appreciate recent national efforts to stress the importance of credentials and educational attainment beyond high school. We encourage both investments in training and rethinking of service delivery and strategies of workforce boards and agencies and of community colleges.
As we look at the current federal funding for workforce development, our conclusion is that the one-stop investments are financially unsustainable and increasingly not well aligned with the crucial goal of increasing educational attainment of workers at risk. If today's system cannot change, it will continue to lose relevance and funding.
We think it is time to start a dialogue about alternative models, and we have articulated this in a new working paper, "Reinventing One-Stop Centers for 21st Century Realities." Our argument is to repurpose one-stops, transforming them into places where work and learning intersect to help transitioning workers obtain needed skills, knowledge, and market-relevant credentials. We are currently sharing this paper with partners and stakeholders nationally for input, and will be leading a discussion on this topic at the upcoming National Association of Workforce Boards' Forum 2012.
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Advancing Metro Detroit Through Innovation and Good Jobs for Residents
CSW convened the first meeting of partners in the Southeast Michigan Advanced Energy Storage Systems Initiative (AESSI) on March 2. The AESSI partnership is working to create new jobs and accelerate commercial application of technologies related to the rapidly emerging advanced energy storage system industry cluster. AESSI is one of twenty partnerships across the country that received awards from the federal Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, a joint effort of the Economic Development Administration, Employment and Training Administration, and the Small Business Administration.
CSW also facilitated a community conversation hosted by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on February 9 regarding the launch of a Detroit workforce coalition. The event brought together over 70 participants from various backgrounds, including community based organizations, training organizations, economic development organizations from the city and state level, philanthropists, community colleges, and more.
CSW shared insights based on interviews with local stakeholders and discussed ways that promising practices from Chicago and Boston may be applied in the Detroit area. We facilitated a discussion among participants about the need and opportunity to form a new coalition. Themes that emerged included the opportunity for continued sharing of promising practices around workforce development and community-based job creation, better alignment of efforts and funding across different initiatives, better coordination and use of data, and better communication and advocacy of what's working to address challenges and policy barriers. We plan to share more updates on this work in the coming months.
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| Promoting Effective Strategies Through Federal Funding |
Workforce Innovation Fund
We are supporting several local efforts to promote leading edge ideas with funding from US DOL's Workforce Innovation Fund through assistance with program design, evaluation planning, and application development. We see a lot of promise in the approaches being developed and are excited that this funding is available for more demonstration of, learning about, and scaling-up the kinds of next-generation strategies we have worked on for over 20 years.
Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT)
The DOL-ETA TAACCCT grant program represents a great opportunity for institutions of higher education to expand and improve their ability to deliver education and career training programs that prepare participants for employment in high-wage, high-skill occupations. We are using our deep experience in the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative education and training policies, partnerships, and programs across the country to support postsecondary institutions as they develop and propose new strategies for this latest round of funding.
Resources
Please visit our website for a mix of supportive resources and more information on how we might be of assistance as you pursue these and other DOL funding opportunities: www.skilledwork.org/strategies-federal-grants
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| CSW On the Road |
CSW Chairman Larry Good presented at the Orchard Foundation's Cenla Work Ready Network 2012 Workforce Summit in Alexandria, Louisiana. The summit was for employers, educators and economic development professionals to collaborate and share the benefits of using the National Career Readiness Certification to build a work-ready region in Central Louisiana. Larry shared workforce development trends from a national perspective. He was joined by a variety of speakers from ACT, Oklahoma, Vermont, Illinois and Michigan to discuss national promising practices. Click here to view the presentation.
Senior Fellow Dr. Keith Bird spoke at the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce's Power in Partnership breakfast. The topic for his remarks was "A Prepared Workforce." Dr. Bird discussed the involvement of community colleges in economic and workforce development, workforce and skill standards certification, career pathways, secondary/postsecondary alignment and collaboration, and business and industry partnerships.
Senior Policy Associate Kysha Frazier and John Metcalf of Thomas P. Miller and Associates shared their national workforce perspective at the Employer Network Roundtable of Charlotte. The roundtable focuses on assisting people into employment. Members include employers, county and city level leaders, and community based organizations. Kysha and John joined the group in a discussion of new national and local economic realities that are rapidly transforming the labor market for workers and job seekers, employers and industries, and the institutions and partnerships preparing people for and connecting them to jobs. These realities present serious challenges, but also offer unexpected new opportunities for collaboration and collective engagement resulting in lasting impact.
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| About CSW |
Corporation for a Skilled Workforce is a national nonprofit organization that partners with government, business, and community leaders to develop good jobs and the highly skilled workers to fill them. We help communities innovate so that they can compete. We help businesses cultivate talent so that they can grow. We help people learn so that they can find good jobs - or create their own.
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