News & Media

These 8 groups are about to get big grants for job training 

Rick Seltzer
Baltimore Business Journal
Oct 26, 2015

A major part of post-riot job-training plans in Baltimore is set to move forward this week with City Hall naming eight groups to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants.

The groups each plan to use between $118,000 and $250,000 toward new job-training efforts under a recently awarded two-year U.S. Department of Labor-funded initiative called One Baltimore for Jobs. The $5 million effort aims to train young, predominantly African-American workers with little employment history, barriers to work and homes in economically distressed neighborhoods hit hard in April’s unrest. Training will center on four sectors picked out for high job growth: health care, construction, manufacturing and transportation and logistics.

Officials involved in the grants say they’re funding programs that could train a total of 700 disconnected workers, with 85 percent graduating into jobs at wages of at least $11 per hour. But the initiative aims to do more than train several hundred people — organizers hope to find best practices, reach out to underserved areas and combine services job seekers need so that more people can navigate the incredibly complex field of workforce training and graduate into employment.

“This is about demonstrating a different way of doing business and fusing together a strong ecosystem,” said Jason Perkins-Cohen, director of Baltimore’s Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. “This is not business as usual. It can’t be business as usual.”

One Baltimore for Jobs will train workers for specific positions, said Perkins-Cohen, whose office is administering the grants to training groups.

“It’s not just job readiness,” he said. “It’s a clear training for a particular sector that provides a clear credential that allows people to get a job.”

Baltimore City’s Board of Estimates is expected to sign off Wednesday on the eight groups, which will receive a total of $1.7 million. They are Associated Catholic Charities Inc., BioTechnical Institute of Maryland Inc., Caroline Friess Center Inc., City Life Community Builders Inc., Civic Works Inc., Humanim Inc., Job Opportunities Task Force Inc. and Vehicles for Change Inc.

Four more groups will soon be named to receive funding, bringing the program’s total grants paid to $2.6 million. That will complete the first phase of the grant, at which point organizers will decide whether to spend the rest of the grant on more skills training or on other services to support training efforts.

The groups receiving funding are already involved in job training in the city, Perkins-Cohen said. The new funding will allow them to expand.

For the BioTechnical Institute, which offers training and certifications for jobs in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, the grant money opens the ability to recruit in new areas, said its executive director, Kathleen Weiss.

“This really gives us more resources by which to do some critical outreach and recruiting,” she said. “You really need time to build up trust.”

Civic Works will train 85 people with its grant money, said Eli Allen, director of Retrofit Baltimore and new initiatives. Almost half, 40, will be in solar installation, with the rest in energy efficiency and brownfield remediation.

“We’ve just been hearing incredible demand from solar companies that need trained workers,” Allen said. “It’s really a specialized skill set where folks need carpentry experience, roofing experience. They need to be comfortable working at heights with background in safety practices as well as electrical experience.”

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