Weekly Roundup of the news on women and supportive services in job training programs.
Job training can provide an entry into family-sustaining jobs and careers. Many women in job training programs, however, face obstacles to success. Wraparound services—such as child care assistance, access to public benefits, and transportation or housing assistance—can help adults, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities, to complete programs that will ultimately improve their economic standing.
April 7, 2016
Monroe Courier: ‘Baby shower’ to support women’s education center
The Mercy Learning Center has a saying — educate a woman, educate a family. […] But a low-income woman in need of literacy and job skill programs could face an additional challenge if she is also the parent of a small child. Mercy’s day care center allows the women with infants and toddlers to attend classes and counseling sessions and meet with tutors without any worries about their young children.
KSPR: Closing the gender gap could grow the economy by $2.1 trillion
Every U.S. state has the potential to grow its economy by at least 5% if it can narrow the gender gap over the next decade, the McKinsey report [The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in the United States] asserts. That means boosting women’s participation in the labor force as well as their (paid) work hours. It also means focusing efforts on creating jobs in industries that typically have hired fewer women than men, such as manufacturing and business services.
[…] Creating those jobs will require an additional investment of at least $475 billion, much of which would probably need to come from the private sector, the report suggests. That money could be invested in everything from infrastructure and innovation to talent development and skills training.
April 6, 2016
YourAlaskaLink: Downtown Soup Kitchen Hopes to Help Homeless Women Learn Job Skills
“We want to give women more than just the shelter, we want to give them a hand up and an ability to get some job training and to have something to get up in the morning for so we started the bakery,” Sherrie Laurie who is the Executive Director for the Downtown Soup Kitchen said.
The Bakery consists of a morning class where the women learn the technical aspects of baking before heading down to the kitchen in the afternoon, where they are taught the hands-on skills.
March 30, 2016
TheEagle: Veterans in San Antonio guided forward after being homeless
Guerra and the three members of his so-called navigator team combine the roles of outreach specialist, peer mentor and case manager. True to their title, the navigators seek to guide veterans living on the streets or in shelters into a place of their own, and then, over time, toward self-reliance.
The approach treats housing as the start of their reintegration rather than the endpoint. The navigators assist veterans in pursuing a new future by connecting them to drug and alcohol treatment, mental health counseling, medical care, job training and other supportive services.
To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org
