Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘job training’

Training Others for Outdoor Jobs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 12, 2023| 4 Comments »

Photo: Frank Carini/ecoRI News.
These Growing Futures RI staff members help trainees get landscaping experience through park maintenance.

In a win-win reminiscent of the Great Depression’s Civilian Conservation Corps, trainees are gaining valuable work experience while benefiting Rhode Island parks.

Frank Carini at ecoRI News has the story.

“The infamous hurricane of 1938 built the Tefft Hill Trail. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. One of the most powerful hurricanes in recorded history did the no-bid prep work. The FDR-era Civilian Conservation Corps, while conducting search and salvage operations and helping with the cleanup, built the Tefft and many other hiking trails in the area that would become known as Arcadia.

“The Rhode Island Department of Agriculture and Conservation — now the Department of Environmental Management — acquired the 14,000-acre Arcadia Management Area a few years before the 1938 hurricane struck. Today, Arcadia features a wide range of natural landscapes, including hardwood and pine forests, hills and valleys, ledges, fields, and lakes, ponds, and streams of various sizes. It also boasts miles and miles of trail.

“DEM doesn’t have the staff necessary to maintain all of Arcadia’s recreation aspects, so a 21st-century version of the Corps lends a hand — many hands, in fact. … The trails in Rhode Island’s largest management area are maintained and tended to under the direction of Jordan Miller, director of education and training for the Rhode Island Nursery & Landscape Association and the leader of RINLA’s Growing Futures RI initiative. …

“For the past three winters, Miller and the program’s two other staffers — Christie Milligan, director of workforce programs, and Mason Billings, program associate and resources coordinator — shepherd 30-40 workers into the Arcadia Management Area to maintain trails, clear overgrown vegetation, repair wooden walkways, and remove invasives. …

“Throughout Arcadia during its destination heyday, there were picnic tables and other amenities, offices in the woods, and a house for the caretaker and his family. In the decades since DEM changed its management strategy for state-owned land, the picnic tables and structures that once decorated Arcadia have faded into the landscape. The baseball field swallowed by vegetation. …

“After the campground closed, the state maintained the beach and recreation area until the mid-1990s, which is around the same time that the universal access boardwalk was built and the Tefft Hill Trail was being transformed into an area more accessible to those living with mobility issues.

“Funded by a federal grant, the boardwalk and bridge were built in three phases over 10 years. DEM’s Division of Forestry did the work using no mechanized equipment to avoid disturbing the sensitive environment,’ according to Michael Healey, the agency’s chief public affairs officer. …

“Miller, who has worked in the horticulture industry in a variety of roles since 2004, was hired in 2020 to run RINLA’s new initiative. The purpose of Growing Futures is to ‘cultivate, train, and educate the next generation of natural resource professionals who will be charged with stewarding, protecting, and responding to a changing environment and feeding our community.’ …

“Every January and February for the past three winters, the 30-40 workforce trainees, under the guidance of the Growing Futures trio, prepare Arcadia trails for a new season of hiking and nature watching. Trainees are hired for a week or five, and crew leaders from RINLA’s 250 member businesses are loaned to the program to ‘help run things in small groups,’ according to Miller.

“ ‘One of the main reasons for that is timing of when our industry starts up for the year and hires people, which is typically in March,’ he said. ‘So we’ll do the training so that people graduate and then they go straight into job interviews and are able to get jobs for the season. The other part of it is because that’s a winter layoff time, we can actually get crew leader staff who were laid off from their landscaping jobs to be able to help us out.’ “

More at ecoRI News, here. No paywall. Nice pictures.

Read Full Post »

Garden Time Helps Inmates

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Joanna Detz/ecoRI News.
The Garden Time program in Rhode Island gives formerly incarcerated people a chance to prepare for reentry into society.

Today’s article about a program to help incarcerated people find work on the outside notes successes and failures. One of the featured participants, Anderson, ended up back in trouble with the law. Others have stuck with the hard work needed to move on.

Colleen Cronin wrote about the initiative at ecoRI News.

“The Green Jobs Reentry Training program run by Garden Time, a Providence-based nonprofit [is] an offshoot of a gardening program run by Garden Time at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) since 2011, according to Kate Lacouture, founder and executive director. In addition to teaching incarcerated people about gardening, the ACI program also helps participants on an individual level with reentry needs when their sentences end.

“Lacouture called the ACI training a ‘pre-employment program,’ because Garden Time teaches gardening, horticulture, and other green industries and brings in employers from those fields to teach and get to know program participants. …

“When the pandemic hit, Garden Time started expanding its work outside the prison. Lacouture said the organization started a garden at Open Doors, a nonprofit focused on reentry in the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood. Working in that garden regularly planted the idea of a formal reentry and job training program for individuals who were out of prison and trying to integrate into the community, Lacouture said.

“Garden Time ran a shorter reentry training pilot program in fall 2021, and thanks to its success, it was funded by the state Department of Labor and Training as a Real Jobs Rhode Island program. This allowed Garden Time to expand the program from six to eight weeks, offer larger weekly stipends to participants ($400 a week), and provide lunch Monday through Thursday.

“For participants of the program who have just left prison, ‘it’s really nice to have a nice landing spot,’ Lacouture said.

“The program also provides students with Chromebook laptops, work boots, and other tools that participants might need on a job. They attend classes in a Manton Avenue classroom on topics such as arboriculture and nutrition, or receive hands-on training at various locations Monday through Friday. Friday mornings are spent at the Open Doors garden.

“During the last week of the program, the students participate in an internship, for which Garden Time pays.

“The internship ‘becomes like an extended job interview, like a chance for the person to prove themselves, a chance for the employer to be comfortable with it,’ Lacouture said. ‘Because a lot of times, you know, you ask an employer if they would hire formerly incarcerated people, and they don’t really know what that means. It sounds scary. They don’t know what that entails.’

“By the end of the program, those who graduate become official Providence tree keepers, receive an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certification for completing a 40-hour training, and hopefully find full-time positions in a green industry job, Lacouture said.

“Participants must attend most of the classes to complete the program, but on the first Friday of the 2022 session, one of Lacouture’s star students was missing.

“Attending classes can be difficult for anyone who has recently been released from prison or has a police record. Suspended or revoked licenses, little funds for car insurance or a car itself, and sporadic and mandatory parole meetings and other legal hearings can all complicate attendance.

“But Ace, who … met Lacouture inside the ACI, missed the first Friday class because of a cat.

“Ace had been working for Groundwork Rhode Island earlier that week, when he saw a stray cat and couldn’t help picking it up, Lacouture said, despite his allergy to cats. The contact caused Ace’s asthma to flare up, keeping him from Friday’s class. …

“Since Ace was released from the ACI, before COVID, he has accumulated cats, dogs, and tons of pepper plants, gotten married, and started his own landscaping business.

“He knows some of the other participants in the reentry program, living in temporary housing and lacking satisfying work, struggling to maintain their connections in the world outside prison walls, looked up to him.

“Even though his success might look easy and the way he speaks and presents himself might seem completely controlled, his journey has been long, he said. He speaks mostly light-heartedly about the past and his hijinks while also admitting to deep pain and trauma. …

“ ‘I’m always getting in trouble,’ Ace said.

“He can talk about growing up in Liberia and sneaking into a neighbor’s garden to snatch fruit in the same easy tone as he discusses the trials of his addiction. And he readily speaks about the therapist he sees regularly to help him with his addiction, as well as attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

“To overcome some of his challenges, Ace said he has had to make adjustments. The green jobs program starts at 9 a.m., but Ace regularly gets there hours early. If he picks his wife up from work, often at 2, 3, or 4 o’clock in the morning, sometimes he chooses to stay up, so he knows he’ll be ready for the class, he said. …

“On an unusually cold Friday morning, John Kenny, owner of Big Train Farm in Cranston, visited Open Doors to talk to the reentry program participants about green farming practices and how they could start their own farms.

“The Farm Service Agency (FSA) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture offers several different loan programs and has targeted incentives for women and people of color.

“ ‘I’m not going to kid you,’ Kenny said, going on to explain that even with help, obtaining a loan and starting a farm isn’t easy. …

“Ace has tried to let a lot go. He knows he’s made mistakes, and he tries to make up for them. He knows his life has been unfair, but he tries not to think about it. On the other hand, injustice boils under Anderson’s skin when [the  57-year-old military veteran and former oil-platform builder] talks about the environmental hazards Black and brown Americans face and their connection to the cyclical criminal justice he and others have experienced.

“Two million people are currently incarcerated in the United States. Out of the 11 participants that arrived at the first day of the reentry program, most were men of color. Two people were white. There was only one woman in the class. The group reflects the larger pool of Americans who are or have been incarcerated. …

“Like many of the people who have been incarcerated around the country, several of the participants in Garden Time’s green jobs program were in prison for long periods or repeatedly throughout their lives.

“A 2021 study of people incarcerated in Rhode Island showed that by the 3-year post-release mark, 47% had been sentenced again to prison. Many of them had been charged again within the first six months of their release date. Education programs inside a prison, like Garden Time, can do a lot to prevent this.”

Read the rest of the long article at ecoRI News, here. No firewall at this nonprofit, but donations are welcome.

Read Full Post »

Job Training That Ends with a Job

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2021| 6 Comments »

Photo: American Diesel Training via Social Finance.
The Social Finance model ensures training programs don’t get paid until students get hired. And students train for free until then.

Because one of the things this blog focuses on is “good works,” I have inevitably put up stories that later turn out to have unexpected downsides. (If I learn about a problem, I do put up a correction.) One story I recall was about an effort in mining country to train out-of-work miners for high-paid tech jobs. I don’t think anyone was trying to rip anyone else off, but there was a Pollyanna aspect to the program, and it didn’t work. Not many people acquired the skills and those that did were unable to find those high-paying jobs.

So that is how we learn. Now there’s a nonprofit called Social Finance that doesn’t pay up on a training program until the trainee has that good job.

Steve Lohr writes at the New York Times, “Bill Barber saw an ad on Facebook last year for American Diesel Training Centers, a school in Ohio that prepares people for careers as diesel mechanics. It came with an unusual pitch: He would pay for the schooling only if it landed him a job, thanks to a nonprofit called Social Finance.

“After making sure it wasn’t a scam, he signed up. After going through the immersive five-week program, he got a job with starting pay of $39,000 a year — about $10,000 more than he made before as a cable TV installer. …

“American Diesel Training is part of a new model of work force training — one that bases pay for training programs partly on whether students get hired. Early results are promising, and experts say the approach makes far more economic sense than the traditional method, in which programs are paid based on how many people enroll. …

“Social Finance, founded a decade ago to develop new ways to finance results-focused social programs, is showing how the idea could grow quickly just as the pandemic made job-training programs more important than ever. The coronavirus put millions of people out of work, upended industries and accelerated automation. …

“The Social Finance effort is powered by a fund of more than $40 million raised from philanthropic investors. The money goes toward paying for low-income students, as well as minority candidates and veterans, to enter the training programs. … It has supported four job training programs, including American Diesel Training, in the past year. It has plans to have double that number a year from now. …

“A few nonprofits have a track record of lifting low-income Americans into higher-paying jobs, including Year Up, Per Scholas and Project Quest. Their training is tightly focused on specific skills and occupations, they work closely with employers, and they teach soft skills like communication and teamwork. But there are too few of them, and they struggle for sustainable financing.

“Social Finance is seeking, designing and supporting new programs — for-profit or nonprofit — that follow that training formula but then apply a different funding model.

“ ‘There is emerging evidence that these kinds of programs are a very effective and exciting part of work force development,’ said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. ‘Social Finance is targeting and nurturing new programs, and it brings a financing mechanism that allows them to expand.’

” ‘The goal is to create a tool for impact, to get more people on the economic escalator,’ said Tracy Palandjian, co-founder and chief executive of Social Finance. …

“For Social Finance and its backers, the career impact bonds are not traditional investments. For them, breaking even or a small return would be winning — proof the concept is working, which should attract more public and private money. …

“The Social Finance income-share agreement with students ranges from about 5 percent to 9 percent depending on their earnings — less from $30,000 to $40,000, and generally more above $40,000. The monthly payments last four years. If you lose your job, the payment obligation stops.

“ ‘Our investors aren’t after high returns. They’re primarily after social impact,’ Ms. Palandjian said.

“When screening programs, Social Finance looks for those that offer training for specific skills linked to local demand, and have data to show that its students graduate and get good-paying jobs. … American Diesel Training, based in Columbus, Ohio, met the requirements. The for-profit company’s program is designed as a short, intensive course to train entry-level diesel technicians, mostly for trucking companies and dealerships. …

“Before Social Finance arrived, Tim Spurlock, co-founder and chief executive of American Diesel Training, looked into financing through income-share agreements offered by venture-backed start-ups. The terms, he said, were far less favorable for students.

” ‘Social Finance comes at it from a completely different angle,’ he said. … ‘We’ve completely proven our educational model. The problem was the funding mechanism.’ ”

More at the New York Times, here.

Read Full Post »

Year Up’s Job Program Really Works

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 16, 2018| 5 Comments »

candid2012-8362

Photo: Year Up
Ana Vargas took part in the Year Up program, which helps many young adults from low-income backgrounds earn college credit, gain skills, and land jobs after serious internships with partner companies.

This was a great idea when it started in 2000, and it’s a great and successful idea now that it has spread to many US cities. It’s all about helping motivated young adults who can’t afford college to get a decent foothold in the job world.

Allison Hagan writes for the Boston Globe, “When Gerald Chertavian started Year Up in 2000, the nonprofit set out to help 22 young adults from low-income Boston neighborhoods earn a decent wage.

“The organization has come a long way from that modest beginning. A new study has found that 4,100 Year Up participants from 21 cities across the country are benefiting from the largest earnings gain associated with any workforce program in US history.

“The research was part of the Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education project sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. It reported that Year Up group members earn 53 percent more than economically disadvantaged young adults who did not participate in the program. The findings said Year Up increased total hours worked by three to four per week and graduates earned nearly $4 more per hour than members of a control group that were part of the study.

“Under Year Up, young adults from low-income backgrounds — ranging in age from 18 to 24 — with a GED or high school diploma can earn college credit while gaining skills in areas such as information technology, quality assurance, and testing applications to assess functionality. Upon completing the yearlong program, graduates earn on average $17.41 an hour, which amounts to $34,000 per year and triumphs over the state’s $11 minimum wage.

“Researchers analyzed Year Up alongside eight other workplace development programs. … It ‘absolutely shows that we can enable people to lift themselves out of a situation of poverty and into a good job, and therefore should be investing in people and seeing them as assets instead of social liabilities,’ [Chertavian] said.

“Year Up students spend six months learning an array of skills such as time management, networking, and leadership. The next six months are devoted to an internship with one of Year Up’s corporate partners, which include 40 Boston-based companies every year. The money that affiliated corporations pay to get interns covers 59 percent of the program’s operating costs, according to Year Up. Combined with sponsorships and private donations, that leaves only 2 percent of the national program’s $150 million budget to public funding. …

“Bank of America Corp. has hired 690 Year Up interns, while State Street Corporation has hired 700, according to Chertavian. State Street reports that it converts 60 percent of Year Up interns into full-time employees.

“ ‘Year Up has opened a new talent pipeline for us that we’ve been able to take advantage of with terrific results,’ said Mike Scannell, senior vice president and president of the financial firm’s philanthropic arm the State Street Foundation.”

More here.

Some years ago I interviewed Year Up founder Gerald Chertavian for a government magazine that hadn’t yet learned to post its articles in html. Here is a pdf. The thing that struck me most about this man is that he was so grateful for being mentored in the urban high school he attended that he volunteered for Big Brother throughout his own college years and then, after selling a successful company at a fairly young age, sought a way to take mentoring to scale.

Read Full Post »

Teaching Miners Coding Skills

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2016| 4 Comments »

This story has received coverage in a bunch of different venues, but I caught it on WNYC’s the Takeaway, with John Hockenberry, on my drive home from Providence today. Just had to share it.*

“General Electric’s CEO announced that all new hires, whether or not they’re working in tech, will now be required to know how to code. New York public schools are also introducing mandatory computer science classes into their curricula.

“These initiatives seem to indicate that coding is the key to getting hired and the panacea to all employment problems, and as the needs of the U.S. job market shifts, people are putting that theory to the test.

“Coal miners in particular have suffered the brunt of the changing job market. With 40 percent fewer jobs than in 2012, coal miners are seeking out second jobs to support their families, and many have turned to coding.

“Amanda Laucher, co-founder of Mined Minds, a free computer coding training program in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, is helping struggling coal miners in her area. Click on the ‘Listen’ button.”

I loved that Laucher told Hockenberry she and co-founder Jonathan Graham were “having a blast.” They didn’t feel like the free service they are self-funding was even a chore. She added that the support of the community made it all possible.

PBS had a bit more background, here:

“When tech consultant Amanda Laucher realized her brother in Greene County, Pennsylvania, the third largest coal-producing county in the country, was at risk of losing his job as a coal miner, she and her husband, Jonathan Graham, decided to help. They began driving about 500 miles from Chicago every weekend to teach him and others in the community how to code.

“Laucher and Graham said they saw an opportunity to wean Greene County off an economy that is heavily dependent on energy. They recently relocated to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, and co-founded Mined Minds, a nonprofit that offers free coding classes to laid-off coal miners and other unemployed workers.” Oh, my. Bless their hearts!

*Update May 12, 2019: Uh-oh. Read about an unfortunate outcome, described at the New York Times, here. I still think it was a worthy effort.

Read Full Post »

Refugees Making Granola

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2015| 4 Comments »

Photo: David Wells

A wonderful organization, the Providence Granola Project, has just received some well-deserved attention in the food magazine Edible Rhody. In fact the magazine has prepared a short video that says it all, here.

Nancy Kirsch writes, “Established in 2008, Providence Granola, now part of Beautiful Day (a nonprofit organization founded in 2012), has a three-fold mission, says Providence Granola co-founder Keith Cooper: Provide job training for immigrants in Rhode Island who are unlikely to otherwise find gainful employment, and educate community members about refugees and refugee resettlement, all by making and selling delicious artisanal granola.

“Cooper and his lean professional staff, including Anne Dombrofski, director of strategic partnerships, work out of the Social Enterprise Greenhouse, a co-working space in Davol Square in Providence. …

“Hand labor is done by a small team at Amos House, a soup kitchen and comprehensive social service agency in Providence. …

“The trainees are immigrants—often, but not always, refugees—who have come recently to the United States. They attend classes at the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island (Dorcas) and, through its assessment process, have been identified as less likely to find employment within the next year, given their lack of first-language literacy and absence of English skills.

“ ‘If we can speed up someone’s entry into the job market from a year or more to between three and six months … there’s a huge benefit,’ says Cooper.”

Read Full Post »

Boston Private Industry Council

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Boston Private Industry Council is made up of employers who pulled together in 1982 to commit to helping Boston Public School students get summer jobs, internships, training — and eventually full-time jobs. They get the experience of working, earning money, and adapting to the soft skills needed in a workplace.

I went to the PIC annual event today to see a young friend who was receiving an award along with 17 other students, employers, and mentors.

I had no idea what a big event it would be. Boston Mayor Menino spoke, as did presidents of community colleges and companies. There were great success stories, several seen in this PBS video feature by Paul Solman.

In 2006, my young friend had been rescued by mentors who worked for a PIC program designed for out-of-school youth. After much hard work, he is now attending a highly regarded local college and expecting to graduate in 2014.

Here’s a description of the out-of-school program, one of the PIC’s offerings:

“Young people who are neither in school nor working have few prospects in today’s economy. That is why the PIC works with those who have dropped out of school and those who finished high school without passing MCAS.

“PIC dropout recovery specialists and career center counselors work with these young people to help get them back on track to education and employment. They help young people take the next step by enrolling them in school, GED programs, training programs and jobs.”

Read more.

Photo: http://www.bostonpic.org/programs/out-school-youth

Read Full Post »

Food and Hope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2012| 2 Comments »

I liked a story in the January 25 Boston Globe. It’s about a gourmet chef taking a job at a homeless shelter and helping to train residents with the marketable skills he knows best.

“Frank Van Overbeeke used to prepare foie gras and filet mignon for the French brasserie crowd as executive chef at Bouchee on Newbury Street,” writes Katie Johnston. “Now he makes cheeseburger meatloaf for the residents at the Pine Street Inn.

“In the shelter’s kitchen, he also oversees the preparation of jerk chicken with pineapple rice pilaf for the Boston Foundation, chicken tikka masala for Simmons College, and baked ziti for doctors at Boston Medical Center.

“Van Overbeeke’s move two years ago from haute cuisine to homeless shelter was a key step in Pine Street Inn’s efforts to develop a corporate catering business to increase revenues to support its food service job-training program.” Read more.

Another job-training program in the culinary arts has been going since 1983 at a prisoner pre-release facility in Concord.

Betsy Levinson writes in a March 29 Globe article, “Four days a week, diners pay $3.21 to enter one of the drab gray buildings at the Concord rotary, drop off their licenses at security, and line up for a seat at one of nine tables in the cafe known as the Fife and Drum.

“Inmates serve as waiters, cooks, and busboys, all trained by chef Kim Luketich. Those who complete the 10-month culinary arts program get a Serve Safe food-handler certificate, making them eligible for work in restaurants.

“ ‘I love it,’ said Jacqueline Friedman, an Acton resident arriving for lunch. ‘It’s an experience. The guys are so nice and are trying so hard.’ …

“ ‘This is a premier program,’ said the superintendent. ‘No other facility has this kind of program that allows the community to come in and eat. We have some elderly who have come daily for years. It’s a great setting, a great atmosphere.’

“ ‘They learn quality skills,’ said Luketich. … “‘They learn social skills. The whole idea is that they will go back into society. That is what we focus on.’ ’’

Read more. As the article says, food service is one of the areas where there actually are jobs today, and it can be a way to get acclimated to dealing with the public.

Photograph: Bill Greene/Globe Staff

Read Full Post »