The COVID-19 crisis has catalyzed an urgent need for large-scale public health and economic re-opening and recovery initiatives, which will create thousands of new employment opportunities. At the same time, it has created unprecedented and rapid unemployment and loss of income in ways that amplify the inequities already defining our region's labor market. It is [...]
Apprenticeship 2020 is a new $3.2M fund to accelerate efforts to scale high-quality work-based learning programs in Chicago. Local and national foundations including JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce.org, The Joyce Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, Pritzker Traubert Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and others, have launched this collaborative effort, in partnership with employers and other stakeholders to test new [...]
The Genesis Movement developed from a collaboration between the Funder Alliance and the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) that began in 2013 and continues today. The Funder Alliance first awarded IMEC a planning grant to help develop an Industry Workforce Partnership for manufacturing. But what developed in 2014 was a different kind of initiative. IMEC [...]
https://youtu.be/-HYtXSFsgY8 In the spring of 2017, the Obama family made a $1 million gift to the Funder Alliance with instructions to use the funding to support a “generational shift” in Chicago’s building trades workforce. The Obama family knew that underrepresentation of communities of color and women in building trades careers is a persistent problem, [...]
Reimagine Retail Chicagoland is a collaborative workforce development initiative funded by Aspen Institute with support from the Walmart Foundation. The initiative’s three main strategies include helping improve the quality of jobs for workers in entry-level positions, create pathways for advancement in retail and related sectors, and increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention. ReimagineRetail Brochure [...]
