Blogging the National Network of Sector Partners National Conference

Washington, D.C. – This week I’m at the national conference of the National Network of Sector Partners. The conference will cover a wide range of topics related to industry driven workforce development initiatives, including sector case studies, policy and systems change, green jobs and other emerging industries, and program sustainability. Dinner Thursday night is being [...]

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Fablab in KW Neighborhood

So, awhile back we posted about our experience at the Boston Fablab and how we might work to bring one to Tulsa. Well, fast forward and Kendall Whittier Inc is seriously pursuing the idea of putting one in the KW neighborhood. There will be a community presentation on Oct 5 at 7pm at Educare at [...]

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CareerAdvance: New Pathways to Economic Security

The Tulsa Initiative is getting set to launch a new pilot program to help our Head Start and Early Head Start parents advance their careers and secure a better economic future for their families.
The project, called CareerAdvance, is a multi-faceted approach to job training and supportive services. It includes:

Sector-Driven – Our initiative will be sector-driven, [...]

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Apprenticeships: They’re Not Feudal

For some reason every time I hear the term “apprenticeship” I think of feudal workshops of blacksmiths and shoe cobblers. In my role as coordinator of a sector-based career advancement project, I’ve been hearing the term quite a bit more lately but I still haven’t known a lot about them. So here are some things [...]

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Hispanics in the Workforce

According to the National Council of La Raza, “Latinos have the highest labor force participation rate in the United States (68.7%), yet they earn the lowest median weekly wages at only $545 per week.”
I also didn’t know that NCLR has a workforce division with a Health Care Career Pathways Initiative:
The NCLR Health Care Career Pathways [...]

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Workforce Wonkery Received

Matt Yglesias, of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, took in stride my comment that policy writers missed the point of that CEA report – it was about reforming workforce programs, not about the growth of healthcare and education jobs (which we already knew all about).
He writes:
But Micah Kordsmeier explains that the important part [...]

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In Need of More Workforce Wonkery

Washington Post writer Ezra Klein must be reading too, because he clicked over to that Council of Economic Advisors report on the jobs of tomorrow and had a thing or two to say:
The first is that the private sector is not projected to do a lot of job creation on its lonesome over the next [...]

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Quote of the Day

“The most important ‘post-high school’ education and training reform is a strong early childhood and elementary and secondary education system.”
- From the Council of Economic Advisors report “Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow“
By the way, you are owed a substantive post from me and you shall get it. Get excited!

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Workforce Programs Work, pt. 2

As some of you may know, Tulsa Initiative has spent much of the past year exploring the feasibility of offering high-quality employment and training services to CAP families. These types of programs can get pretty expensive prety quickly, and thus there’s been a longstanding debate on the cost-effectiveness of “jobs” programs (see this article by our [...]

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Unemployed Busying Themselves with Volunteerism

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this article in the New York Times. Apparently newly unemployed white collar workers are beating down the doors of NYC-area nonprofits in search of volunteer opportunities. A volunteer matching website called volunteernyc.org has seen its searches increase by 30 percent over the prior year. Many of these [...]

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