Laura Glesby Photo
EMERGE's Richard Watkins on Monday: Young people's voices matter.
Aspiring medical assistants, landscapers, and manufacturers now have a clearer path to career success, thanks to a new city grant designed to skill up New Haven’s workforce.
Through the city’s new Career Pathways Initiative, city government has allocated a total of $1 million in federal money to 10 local nonprofits focused on job training and mentorship for New Haven teens and young adults — with specific programs focused on bioscience, software engineering, healthcare, music, manufacturing, construction, and entrepreneurship.
City officials and representatives from those nonprofits gathered on Monday morning at the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT), a Science Park-based job training nonprofit, to announce the new funding.
“If you knock on doors in New Haven, you’re gonna hear a couple of things over and over again,” Mayor Justin Elicker said. One of those repeated responses: “We’ve got to do more for our young people.” He stressed the importance of guiding kids who are interested in “not just a four-year college degree, but all the different permutations of that education.”
These programs will lead to “a job where you can earn a decent wage, a livable wage,” said Newhallville/Dixwell/Prospect Hill Alder Troy Streater.
The new grant program combines money from the State and Local Recovery Fund with part of the $8 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds reserved for vocational education that alders voted to approve last year.
In the first round, 10 local organizations including Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership, Inc. (LEAP), the CT Violence Intervention Program, and the Connecticut NAACP received approximately $100,000 each.
The funding will go toward training and apprenticeship programs, many of which are already running on a smaller scale, as well as mentoring and “life skills” education to help teens and young adults navigate the challenges of any path they take.
Those initiatives include an eight-month computer science bootcamp, a training and externship program for aspiring medical and billing assistants, a construction and landscaping apprenticeship, and a music education course.
A second round of applications for the grant will open this summer.
Mayor Justin Elicker.
The Career Pathways Initiative is one of several local initiatives focused on vocational and technical education. New Haven Public Schools has recently partnered with Gateway Community College to offer manufacturing training, and ConnCAT recently announced a new “BioLaunch” program to train Dixwell and Newhallville residents for biotech jobs.
The city is also exploring the possibility of starting a vocational-technical school for New Haven high school students, Elicker said. It is hiring a consultant to research the best structure for such a program, which could take the form of a standalone school or of a half-day program for students at a variety of schools like ACES’ Educational Center for the Arts program.
Richard Watkins, the personal development coordinator at one grant recipient, EMERGE, had a question for the city and nonprofits present on Monday: How have the voices of young people been incorporated in the development of these various programs? Has anyone asked kids, “What is it that you want?”
“There’s a lot of adults here,” Elicker acknowledged, gesturing to the crowd of press conference attendees. But he said that the city has solicited input from teens. “A lot of what we’ve heard is, ‘We want a safe place to go.’ ”
Some of the non-profit representatives and city officials involved in the Career Pathways Initiative's first round — too many to fit in one group photo.
The grant recipients are ConnCAT, the CT Violence Intervention Program, District Arts Education, EMERGE, Junior Achievement, LEAP, Match Inc. (a forthcoming manufacturing program), NAACP CT, the Urban Community Alliance, and Youth Entrepreneurs.
Laquita Joyner-McGraw, the founder of Youth Entrepreneurs, said the funding will help bolster the organization’s afterschool program to “get our kids onto college campuses” and connect aspiring entrepreneurs with “local minority businesses.”
LEAP Executive Director Henry Fernandez spoke to the role of career training as part of a pandemic recovery effort. “The needs of our young people have really skyrocketed during Covid,” he said. After multiple years of social distancing and remote education, “we’re seeing real social development and professional development gaps.”
LEAP is planning to use the grant to provide workshops on leadership skills, post-secondary education options, and career advice.
At EMERGE, a training and employment program for people transitioning out of prison, the funding will grow the organization’s construction and landscaping apprenticeship program, expanding the capacity for 10 extra students between the ages of 18 and 25.
Alden Woodcock, the director of EMERGE, said the grant will help “tailor our program to the unique needs of our young people” by funding extra “support and time to talk through the drama.”
Urban Community Alliance, meanwhile, plans to expand its Veterans Empowering Teens Through Support (VETTS) mentorship and job coaching program.
“I’m looking forward to working with the other [nine] of you because together we can be a greater resource,” Executive Director Shirley Ellis-West said.
Shirley Ellis-West of Urban Community Alliance.
If you want to teach a valuable skill-- teach your clients how to show up on time, do your best, and keep your unpleasant attitude to yourself. People on jobs that they feel are beneath them take it out on the customers. I will walk out of stores now if the staff cops a pissy attitude. No one owes them anything-- you have to prove that you are worth the money that the owner is giving them!!! Many are overpaid even a $9 an hour based on their performance, or lack of