Elevate Futures - MSP

 
On Monday was Mayor Carter’s annual State of the City. I thought the Mayor did a solid job dynamically conveying his strong sense of optimism. He reminded us of the city’s core values of resilience and innovation. A quote that grabbed me: “our greatest asset is the strength of our unity.”  We really value that commitment as well, and we are on board to do our part. Of particular interest to me were Mayor Carter’s comments on the Downtown Alliance’s Downtown Investment Strategy. He highlighted both the policy objective to establish an incentive to convert downtown underused/vacant commercial buildings to residential and the proposed renovation of the Xcel Energy Center, “a venue that exemplifies the vibrancy the City has to offer.” We are strong supporters of both!
 
It’s a great day for our region’s talent development work. Your Chamber, along with the Minneapolis Regional Chamber, the cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, and the WIBs serving Ramsey, Hennepin, and Carver counties, have been awarded a Drive for Five Grant from DEED! First off, the grant: The Drive for Five Workforce Initiative is a major new effort to prepare more Minnesotans for high-demand jobs in five occupational categories: technology, labor, caring professions, manufacturing, and education/professional services. Drive for Five prioritizes training for populations that face the largest disparities in employment: people of color, people with disabilities, people who lack stable housing, and other people who face barriers to family-sustaining employment.
 
We have branded our program “Elevate Futures – MSP.”  The ”Dream Team” listed above is committed to partnering with job training entities, and then facilitating both employer readiness training as well as job fairs/matching sessions. Our intent is to develop this regional work such that it can continue and even expand after the initial grant’s funding ends. We’ve been preparing – hoping – for such an announcement, and we all are thrilled (though it will take some time to get ramped up). Stay tuned for more information on this, in case you are interested in exploring if this program would be helpful for you in meeting your own organization’s workforce needs.
 
To provide more color to the Elevate Futures – MSP project, I am happy to share more details. The vision for EF-MSP to provide employer engagement for job placement and provide employers with DEI training. These services are designed to create and support a regionwide talent development system that addresses employers’ need for skilled employees and connects jobseekers to careers in high-demand occupations. The project will focus on the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which have multiple neighborhoods that experience persistent poverty, unemployment, and underemployment and on the metro suburbs, which also have growing pockets of poverty.
 
We will engage employers through a variety of opportunities across the Twin Cities metro designed to connect and match employers with jobseekers, including Job Fairs, Occupation-Specific Hiring Events, a Mock Interview Corps, and Employer Job Quality Initiative (EJQI). We also will provide DEI and Job Quality training to help employers remove barriers, improve workplace culture, and offer jobs that lift up workers and families and makes their businesses more competitive. Our ultimate goal is to support recruitment and placement for at least 120 individuals across the metro area in high-wage employment ($25+/hour) in the target sectors.
 
Because we were just notified of this award, we await further guidance from DEED relative to timing of funding. In the meantime, though, know that employer readiness training already is underway.
 
Look for Employer Readiness programming already underway on the SPAC or MRC calendar!
 

• Equity Leadership Series programming
• DEI Collaborative cohort
• MN Skills-Based Hiring Accelerator Workshops (and the online “Community of Practice”)

 
Again, stay tuned. Should your organization be interested in participating in this program, we’ll schedule an informational Zoom meeting to review program and introduce next steps.
 
See you in the trenches,

​B