I enjoyed seeing you all on Friday at our Fall NCWorks Champions meeting held at Martin Memorial Library. Our first speaker was Pat Harris, Outreach Coordinator for Region Q. Pat shared information and advice for cultivating partnerships with local libraries as well as highlighting resources available through the libraries (see Library_Partnerships_101619).
Next we heard from Roxana White with Telamon Ahoskie, who shared that catfish farms, Perdue and Smithfield foods are among the employers that have qualifying farmworker roles (see Telamon_NFJP Presentation). Telamon also has funds that can often work with WIOA funds to help support customers more holistically. Contact Roxana if you have questions (rwhite@telamon.org)
Each Champion shared how they’ve promoted Career Pathways in their centers and in their communities. You guys are doing great work, it was exciting to hear! Please remember to share events and information with me when possible, through email or social media so we can share our successes with all of our partners.
Larry reminded us the purpose of this group (see Champions_Meeting_101819) and discussed local implementation. He would have led us in a discussion about our goals for 2019-2020, but we ran out of time!
Please consider what goals you would like to have for 2019-2020. If you have ideas for new goals, please let me know. We will discuss goals at our next meeting.
NENC Career Pathways Updates
- Traitify – Click here to view the most recent Traitify updates. Click here for a link to instructions on various Administrator topics in Traitify. Let me know if you have questions or if you feel I need to visit your center to help with Traitify. I’m hoping to have someone from Traitify at our spring Annual Career Guidance Retreat to talk about updates and answer questions, so keep that in mind when asking about Traitify in staff meetings.
- 2019-2020 Work Plan – (see [pdf-embedder url=”http://nencpathways.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-2020-Workplan-updated-10.9.19.pdf” title=”2019-2020 Workplan updated 10.9.19″]) This is the calendar for partnership events during 2019-2020. Please let me know if you have conflicts with any meeting dates, and also if you have suggestions for speakers or activities for any of them. Also see the Projects and Activities list 2019-2020which breaks down the plans for the year by area of focus.
- Teacher Pathway –We are working with RTI and the Governor’s Office along with our local Workforce Development Boards and Superintendents to research and develop a pathway to help recruit and retain teachers in our region. It is our hope to create the first state-wide career pathway while addressing a dire situation for nearly every community in our state. If you have thoughts, information to share or questions about this initiative, please don’t hesitate to ask. We are still in the information gathering stage so any programs you are aware of with similar goals (i.e. Teacher Cadets in high schools), please let me know.
- Agriculture Youth Apprenticeship – Our friends at ApprenticeshipNC were awarded a grant through PAYA to help develop youth apprenticeships in agriculture in the Northeast. We have met with Beaufort CCC already, and are looking to connect with employers, colleges and CTE in other parts of the region as well. Please let me know of any agricultural related companies in your area that might be interested in learning more (especially if they are often posting for entry level jobs). There are many incentives to employers for working with youth apprentices, including tuition waivers and in some cases wage assistance. Not to mention the ROI is $1.47-$2 for every dollar invested and the completion rate in NC for youth apprentices is 91%.
- RAMP East – Please see the attached RAMP East document RAMP East Center Champions Update 10.18.19for an update. Also see below for current stats:
Data to report
AMI Classes
Beaufort upcoming, still needs enrollment of a few
Martin, cancelled due to enrollment
Roanoke Chowan, upcoming, still needs enrollment for a few
Pitt- first class completed (6)
Edgecombe- pilot successful (6), second class underway
Halifax, first class underway
Wilson-first underway
Nash-first class underway
Contact Christy (charris@rampeast.org) or Angie (ajenkins@rampeast.org) if you have any questions, or if you feel like your center needs more training on RAMP East. If you have someone complete the form on rampeast.org, please email Christy and Angie to let them know. There have been issues with them not receiving the information from the website so please send it to be on the safe side until the issues area resolved.
Discussion
- Opportunity Pathways for adults – If you noticed in the Plans and Activities, our focus was going to be success stories. Success stories are vitally important to marketing your services, and we definitely want to figure out ways to capture and share them. However, I recently had another suggestion that I thought made a lot of sense for us to work on. Especially after the great success of the Pathways “cheat sheet” we created, which is being used across our region! See below for the topic. We will spend a lot of our time at the December meeting focused on this, so please be thinking about it!
“We really need to establish more concrete “opportunity pathways” for adult learners. This aligns with the new myFutureNC initiative focusing on credential attainment for ages 25-54…
Career advising and ties from our pathway work to projects like RAMP East are MUCH needed…
Connecting people from where they are to where they want to be. Helping them truly MAP out that path- past the point of initial employment…”
Just over the weekend, I ran across a few videos that might be helpful in explaining this. Our friend Erin (Pathways Specialist for Eastern Carolina WDB) created these awesome videos that seem to do a pretty good job of explaining some of what we’re trying to do. Check them out and let me know what you think, and if/how we can incorporate them (or something like them) in our focus on adult pathways.
- Staff Meeting Topics (see Staff meeting topics ) – Are these helpful to you? If so, would you like me to add more? Do you have suggestions for topics?
- Outreach – You guys are doing a great job of going out into our communities and sharing information. One way our partnership will support this effort in 2019-2020 is through “booth kits.” We are currently working with the marketing agency to create 2 kits which will include items like hard hats and stethoscopes, along with a social media type frame and possibly brand it as “See your Selfie in a new Career!” Each kit will also include two vertical banners, one promoting Traitify and one NENC Career Pathways and well as rack cards which will focus on our pathways. Partners will be able to “sign out” a booth kit for events on their calendar. This project is still in early development so if you have ideas or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
We also have a little space in the budget for sponsorships this year. We have sponsored the Northeast Ag Day (event to expose HS kids to careers in Ag) and reserved a booth. We will share information from many of our partners from this booth. Let me know if you know of a partner (or group of partners) who need help with booth fees, or an event that would be good for us to sponsor, let me know.
d)Partners – We would like to continue growing our partnership, reaching more organizations in our communities that we can work with for common causes. One of the ways we’re focusing on doing this is through Networking ReDesigned. We held the inaugural event in August at Pitt Community College (see here) with great success. We are already planning the next one, and other areas are interested. Click here for information on how to host Networking ReDesigned in your local area.
Thanks for all that you do to connect with partners in your communities. Please continue to add to your partner organizations. If you can think of ways our partnership can help support your partnerships, please let me know. If your center, or any of your partners, would like more training on career pathways related matters, please share this Training Options 7.22.19 list with them.