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By Joe Boomgaard | TBL
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GRCC’s John Van Elst serves as program manager of the Pathways to Prosperity program, which helps get low-income residents the technical and soft skills help they need to survive and thrive in a modern “green” workplace. Photo: Joe Boomgaard

GRAND RAPIDS — Often people in poverty who most need to find employment can have some major roadblocks in their way, but one local program has garnered national attention as a potential way forward.

The Pathways to Prosperity program aims to take the best of job training and education programs from a host of partner organizations and coalesce them under one moniker to not only help people get skills and find much-needed employment, but also to assist local companies in assembling a workforce trained in the skills needed for today’s workplace.

The program combines the best efforts of Grand Rapids Community College, Area Community Service Employment and Training Council, Goodwill Industries of Greater Grand Rapids, Manpower, the Women’s Resource Center, and Literacy Center of West Michigan, said GRCC’s John Van Elst, the program manager.

The U.S. Department of Labor awarded GRCC and its partners a $4 million “Pathways out of Poverty” grant from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding. The program runs through January 2012.

“We took the best of what they’re doing and looked at how we can be sustainable. Each partner brings something key to this grant,” Van Elst told TBL. “They all do that in some fashion on a smaller scale, but we rely on the partners to do different things in this grant. The employers are very important, too.”

Van Elst said the program is aimed at low-income Grand Rapids residents 18 years of age or older who are unemployed or underemployed. Pathways was originally thought of as a program to combat generational poverty, but the recent recession proved that situational poverty — where people who had jobs now find their former jobs don’t exist anymore and that they lack the skills for the jobs of today — can be a substantial obstacle for people.

Once in the program, participants are paired with a career coach that works with the individuals to identify where their skills and abilities could fit with available local jobs. The coach helps them plan how to up-skill their competencies so that they have a higher likelihood of being successful in the long run.

To date, the college has engaged with more than 1,200 people about the training opportunities available from the grant. About 600 qualifying participants went on to meet with the career coaches, a novel part of the program that raised the Department of Labor’s interest. The coaches help the participants identify a route to success by matching their skills with necessary training.

The number of graduates to find work after completing the program is approaching the 100 mark.

Van Elst said conversations with employers found that one common issue is that many people lack employability skills, the soft skills needed to be successful in a modern workplace, which in turn was leading to retention issues. The Pathways program addresses those concerns with a 6-week basic skills training class that puts the participants in totally unfamiliar groups. What the instructors have found is that the people in the cohorts become a support group for one another. They network together, get to know one another and even help out with job leads, he said.

“A lot of what we’re teaching them is around critical thinking and teamwork. They get to practice that in their cohort group,” Van Elst said. “It’s been a long time since many of them stepped into a classroom, but to work with someone else to get a product out — (in this case) a presentation — they realize they’re expected to get to class every day and on time. They need to treat it like their job.”

The idea for the Pathways program stemmed from conversations GRCC had with several local employers about the future of education and training for the green jobs of the future, whether those jobs are in manufacturing or service industries.

But more importantly, the discussions hinged on getting people training that would result in them having the ability to find jobs after the training was completed.

“We don’t want to train anyone where there’s no employment,” Van Elst said. “We want to help them update their basic skills where there’s a pathway defined so we can make sure they can make a sustainable living.”

The program engaged with CEOs and HR professionals at a recent outreach event featuring a presentation from Cascade Engineering’s Fred Keller, one of the early collaborators on the program.

“Our intention is to make sure everyone was on board (and) provide jobs. We want them to take a chance on someone that might be different,” Van Elst said.

Engaging with employers forms a foundation for the program. The partners need businesses to communicate their workforce needs so education and training can be tailored to satisfying them.

“One of the prime examples of that is with workplace science — a class developed around critical thinking and basic scientific methods,” he said. “(Companies we’re talking to) want to get someone in an entry-level position to get a background in it, to understand how a battery works. It’s just basic knowledge. But that’s why we look to employers. We go out and listen to what their needs are. They’re the ones that do the hiring.”

The focus of the Pathways program is on “green” jobs as defined and accepted by the Department of Labor. That can take into account jobs in transportation and energy, as well as construction. For example, one group is getting all the training and certifications needed to work in deconstruction, a field that aims to reuse and recycle as much building material as possible without sending it to the landfill.

Van Elst said people going into the programs realize that they could be on the cutting edge of some new jobs and they might have to travel out of the region for work as markets take time to develop closer to home. Some wind turbine technician students had to go out of state to those where wind energy has been longer established, but he said they realize it’s only a matter of time before those jobs exist here, too.

While there are many needs in the healthcare industry, the program officials have yet to find a way to work the green jobs focus into that field, Van Elst said.

The Pathways to Prosperity organizers want to engage with another 600 participants by the end of January, when the grant funding runs out. But as the economy slowly kicks back to life, they’re finding many people are foregoing training opportunities and simply heading back to the workplace.

“We’re thinking of a way to sustain this when the grant goes away,” he said. “That’s where the employers come in. (Their needs don’t) go away. (There’s an opportunity) for us to do the basic skills and education and training … for the entry-level, working wage jobs.

“We can’t give them 100-200 people at a time, but we can give them someone that will fit their needs. We can update their basic skills and train them in technical skills. That’s important for the employer — here’s someone who will come work-ready.”