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MAYOR
WALSH, OFFICE OF WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT DEVOTE $2.4 MILLION IN NEIGHBORHOOD
JOBS TRUST FUNDS TO EMERGENCY WORKFORCE SUPPORT, TECH TRAINING FOR
RESIDENTS
Distributed
funds will address the needs of Boston's workforce impacted by COVID-19
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BOSTON
- Wednesday, June 10, 2020 - Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Mayor's Office of
Workforce Development today announced the dedication of $2.4 million in Neighborhood Jobs Trust
(NJT) funds to address the pressing needs of Boston's workforce during
the COVID-19 pandemic. These needs include educational and financial support
for college students, remote learning assistance for English language
learners, re-training for hospitality and restaurant workers who lost jobs
due to the pandemic, and continued funding for community-based organizations
that are crucial to Boston's long-term economic recovery. The NJT funds will
also support training programs to help job-seekers enter tech sector job
openings as cybersecurity analysts, computer support specialists, application
developers, IT business analysts, and network field engineers.
"Supporting
our students, workers, and community-based organizations that are re-training
our workforce to be ready for the economy post-COVID-19 is crucial for
Boston's equitable, long-term recovery," said Mayor Walsh. "Leveraging
funding from new development to invest in job training and job placement was
our priority before COVID-19, and it will continue to be a priority so that
we can help all of residents have opportunities to succeed."
The
Neighborhood Jobs Trust is a public charitable trust that funds education and
job training programs for low- and middle-income Boston residents. The Trust
is replenished by linkage fees paid by developers of large-scale commercial
projects in Boston. Since 2014, new development approved by the Boston
Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) is generating over $75 million in
linkage fees, with $61.6 million to support affordable housing and $13.5
million to support job training.
Since
the start of the pandemic, NJT has issued more than $500,000 in emergency
grants to nonprofit organizations that provide front-line support to Boston's
workforce. For example, BEST Hospitality Training - which traditionally
trains workers for Boston's hotel industry - is pivoting to train job-seekers
for environmental services positions in healthcare settings. Another
nonprofit, Tech Goes Home, is using NJT funds to help adult education and
ESOL English programs transition to remote learning by providing technical
training to instructors and laptops to students.
"During
the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how quickly low wage work, language
barriers and historic systems of exclusion have exacerbated income inequality
in our communities and neighborhood," said Lisette Le, executive
director of VietAID, an emergency grant recipient. "As our organization
responded to addressing basic needs - food insecurity, support with
unemployment - with support from NJT, we also saw it as an opportunity to
provide workforce training to those who were unemployed and underemployed
because of COVID-19."
NJT
has also devoted nearly $30,000 to an emergency fund for Tuition-Free
Community College (TFCC) Plan students struggling to continue their
spring semester due to financial or educational challenges brought on by the
pandemic. Approximately half of all TFCC students applied for support to help
with college completion. Nearly two-thirds of the applicants indicated that
they or their family had experienced a loss of income due to COVID-19.
"I
am super thankful and blessed for the emergency funds that I received because
it helped me finish up this semester when I didn't think I could," said
Shayne Clinton, a student at Bunker Hill Community College.
Last
year, NJT
funded 23 community-based organizations that provide low-income Boston
residents with job training and support services. The Trust is committing
$1.27 million to level-fund these programs in order to support their work,
stabilize their budgets, and ensure they can continue to serve the City's
growing number of job-seekers.
This
year, the Trust is distributing more than $550,000 to 12 organizations that
will train residents for careers in the tech sector, Boston's second largest
industry. The programs, selected through an open Request for Proposals (RFP)
process this spring, employ unique designs to confer particular technical
training. Resilient Coders, for example, teaches software development skills
to low-income people of color in a coding bootcamp environment that
emphasizes communication, collaboration, and networking. Another grantee,
Apprenti, prepares tech trainees from under-represented populations for paid,
registered apprenticeships with local employers.
"This
funding from the Neighborhood Jobs Trust will provide the opportunity to
train more Black and Brown young adults as full stack software developers and
connect them with tech jobs in which the average starting salary of our last
class was $98,200," said David Delmar, executive director of Resilient
Coders. "The Trust's funding will significantly impact the lives of
Black and Brown men and women and their families, and help reduce Boston's
income inequality."
A
comprehensive list of NJT tech training grantees can be found below.
FY21 NJT Tech Training Grantees
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