Manufacturer Pitches Training Hub

Marcia LaFemina is looking to transform a vacant Fair Haven industrial building into a community hub where manufacturing trainees can take bilingual classes, sign up for energy assistance, and receive diapers for their kids. 

LaFemina has been working with city officials and local organizations including the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to create a not-for-profit job training center called Manufacturing And Technical Community Hub (MATCH).

She has identified a building for the program: a two-story, red-brick former warehouse at 20 – 26 Mill St. She is applying for a State Department of Economic and Community Development grant that would fund construction.

LaFemina, who is the president of the Penn Globe outdoor lighting manufacturing company, plans to move her company’s North Branford offices to the MATCH building so that Penn Globe employees can run the manufacturing classes.

Manufacturing classes at MATCH would be free for students, LaFemina said. As with an existing state training program that LaFemina hopes to adapt, students would be able to specialize in machining, CNC (computer numerical control) operating, electro-mechanic assembly, logistics, and quality control. LaFemina also wants to offer trainings for positions off the shop floor, from Excel skills to manufacturing sales.

MATCH would operate with a different revenue stream from other job training programs in the state. Rather than relying on grant funding, the program would contract with local manufacturers — including Penn Globe — to have students produce certain elements over the course of their training. Revenue from the contracts would be reinvested into the non-profit, LaFemina said. She said the model would have an added benefit of contributing to a local manufacturing economy, by producing parts that some companies would ordinarily have sourced elsewhere.

LaFemina also aims to make MATCH uniquely accessible and flexible for students with families and additional work obligations, for those with more comfort speaking Spanish, and for students without access to a car. Through her work on the board of the Workforce Alliance and ManufacturerCT, LaFemina noticed that many existing training programs demand long hours and aren’t located along public transit lines. The Mill Street building is located along the 204 and 206 bus routes. 

The classes at MATCH would be conducted in English and Spanish. They would take up only 25 hours per week, compared to most trainings’ full-time programs, so that trainees don’t necessarily need to pay for childcare. ​“Theoretically, if your kids are school-aged, you can be home when they get home,” she said.

This schedule is especially designed to support women and single parents who might otherwise have been discouraged from seeking out manufacturing training. ​“Women do make less than men, and we have to fix that inequity,” LaFemina said. ​“But we have to get them into the workforce first.” From a business perspective, women are a ​“completely untapped market” in the manufacturing world, she said.

LaFemina envisions hosting satellite offices for the Housing Authority at 20 – 26 Mill St. She imagines representatives from organizations like the Connecticut Diaper Bank, or the Community Action Agency of New Haven’s utility assistance program, stopping by during trainees’ lunch breaks. 

At the February Fair Haven Community Management Team meeting last week, LaFemina explained that she seeks to reduce long commutes back and forth between resource centers for trainees. ​“We’re gonna have this space dedicated for the community, rent-free,” she said. 

She said she believes the program could train 1,000 manufacturing workers over the course of four years.

At the management team, LaFemina received a chorus of support from neighbors in the Zoom room’s chat function.

“Sounds very exciting,” wrote David Weinreb. ​“Grateful that this team continues to show up throughout the process. Let’s make it happen on Mill Street!”

Barry G. echoed the enthusiasm: ​“This whole project that was just described sounds wonderful and would be an asset to our community.”

LaFemina used to live in Fair Haven herself, in the 1980s. A week after the management team meeting, she observed that the neighborhood often gets ​“lost in the shuffle” when it comes to economic opportunity in the city. Since she started dreaming up MATCH a year ago, ​“I always wanted it to be in Fair Haven,” she said.