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In recognition that a competent, skilled workforce
is essential to the economic health and growth of Baltimore City,
the Foundation supports job skills training that enables low-income,
unemployed and underemployed job seekers to secure jobs that pay
family-sustaining wages. Priority is given to programs that link
hard-to-serve job seekers with employment, that promote job retention
for at least one year of employment, and that enhance opportunities
for low-wage workers to improve their skills and move into higher
wage jobs.
The Foundation works with nonprofit organizations,
employers and public agencies to improve how public workforce development
funding is being spent in Baltimore and to link effective programs
with public funding. The Foundation also works with nonprofit organizations
to increase job seekers' access to needed services, including literacy
services, transportation, substance abuse treatment, and services
for ex-offenders. Finally, The Abell Foundation seeks to strengthen
policy initiatives that support low-income families and enhance
wages. These initiatives include increasing the minimum wage, increasing
access to income support such as the earned income tax credit, and
reforming child support enforcement for low-income, non-custodial
parents.
Areas of interest include:
- job training and placement
- job retention and career advancement
- job readiness training
- non-custodial parents
- child support enforcement reform
- income supports
- welfare reform
Learn more about the workforce development initiatives
funded by The Abell Foundation by visiting Publications/Research.
More information is also available in our Highlights below.
Workforce Development Highlights
Caroline
Center
As a job-training center for hard-to-place, low-skilled women with
criminal backgrounds, the Caroline Center Upholstering has become
an award-winning site for its earn-as-you-learn program. In addition
to becoming proficient in upholstery, the trainees also acquire
customer-related skills associated with estimating, pick-up and
delivery.
Christopher Place Employment
Academy
Homeless, drug- and alcohol-addicted individuals who are determined
to change their lives enter Christopher Place Employment Academy
and live there for three months. Each participant is housed and
clothed and fed seven days a week, and is trained on how to live
in the real world, and in particular, how to get a job and hold
onto it.
Homeless
Persons Representation Project, Inc.
Homeless Persons Representation Project, Inc. (HPRP) has been exploring
the feasibility of Maryland adopting a state policy that would require
employers to consider a list of factors before making a hiring decision
about applicants with criminal records.
Maryland Volunteer Lawyers
Service
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a powerful work incentive
and poverty alleviation tool, helping low-income working families
to increase their earnings by as much as 40%. In 2005, the
Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service led the Baltimore CASH Campaign
in preparing 6,122 tax returns, refunding $8.5 million in federal
refunds, and saving approximately $918,300 in tax preparation fees.
Re-Entry
Center, Mayor's Office of Employment Development
The one-stop center, located in a major shopping mall, offers a
broad array of needed transitional support services and employment-related
assistance to over 4000 ex-offenders returning back into their communities
in an effort to reduce the recidivism rate.
Rose
Street Community Center
The Rose Street Community Center is a "street-corner ministry"
that operates out of two row homes in East Baltimore. Since February
2000, with help from The Abell Foundation, the Rose Street Community
Center has provided services to hundreds of people, providing small
weekly stipends to help them pursue education and training.
St.
Ambrose Outreach Center
In the distressed southern Park Heights neighborhood, where drugs,
hunger, alcohol, domestic violence, crime, and joblessness are just
a few of the pervasive social pathologies that one resident, Sister
Charmaine, director of the St. Ambrose Outreach Center, is fighting
to turn lives around.
STRIVE
Baltimore
STRIVE teaches the unemployed "soft skills," such as the
ability to communicate with customers and coworkers and work effectively
as a member of a team. The programs also offers, job placement and
post-placement support.
Vehicles
for Change
Vehicles for Change is a program that puts a car within reach of
any low-income family that needs one to get to work. Vehicles for
Change demonstrates how ownership of a car can, and often does,
make a critical difference.
Visit the Grantmaking
section to learn about the steps involved in making a grant application
and to see other recently
funded grants.
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