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For Immediate Release: September 7, 2004
Contact:
Carmon Cunningham 617.728.4446, ccunningham@jff.org
NEW NAME FOR PARTNERSHIP TO IMPROVE BOSTON FOR WORKERS AND EMPLOYERS
(Boston) Today, the Funders Group of the Boston Workforce Development Initiative announced a new name for this multi-year effort to move thousands of low-income workers into better jobs while providing employers with the skilled workers needed to compete in today's economy. SkillWorks: Partners for a Productive Workforce expects to help over 2,000 low-income workers advance into career paths that pay family-supporting wages over the next three years.
"The new name reflects the ambition, strategy, and goals of the initiative: helping individuals build meaningful workplace skills and building community-wide collaboration that will improve the quality of life for individuals and help our economy grow and thrive," stated Paul S. Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation.
The Boston Foundation is one of ten members of the Funders Group, ten philanthropic and public investors who have merged funds for SkillWorks into a common pool, with a common set of investment principles. Together, they are injecting nearly $15 million into improving Boston's workforce development system. Each investor has made multi-year commitments to SkillWorks, using a "mutual fund" approach: the funders--private and public--pool their resources into a single fund.
SkillWorks is engaging with a wide array of employers and educational institutions to prepare low-income workers for mid-level jobs in the region's health care, academic, and hospitality industries. These institutions are critical to Boston's economy in the 21st century, and they will provide thousands of low-income Bostonians with the jobs they need to live in decent homes, send their children to college, and become stakeholders in the American Dream.
For more information on SkillWorks, visit www.skill-works.org.
