Building Workforce Strength PDF Download

If one mantra dominates the field of workforce development, it is partnership and collaboration: the need to link disparate training providers and colleges, to better connect employers with training courses and to unite public and private sector funding. The need for partnership is clear, but all the rhetoric and legislative mandates supporting this goal have not added up to much. There are few exceptions to this rule, but one has arisen in an unlikely locale -- New York City, This paper presents a case study of a groundbreaking collaborative, the New York Information Technology Career Ladders Consortium, which has evolved around a philosophy of career progression and pooled services. This paper describes key lessons that inform how other regions can replicate the Consortium's successful model. Career Pathways, the model behind this sector-based initiative, is a system that focuses on creating educational "stepping stones" for advancement of workers and job seekers and provides a supply of qualified workers for employers in a specific economic sector. The Consortium's legacy lies in the creation of a workforce development model that focuses on a high-demand sector through an extensive collaboration of colleges, nonprofits, government agencies and private foundations, which offered its services at scale, serving hundreds of individuals with the system of services created. (Contains 2 tables.) [Funding for this paper was also provided by the J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Greenpoint Savings Bank, Mizuho U.S.A. Foundation, Independence Bank Community Foundation, Verizon Foundation, and Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation.].