Nearly five years ago, Springfield community leaders came together to form the Impacting Poverty Commission (IPC), which was created to address the growing need for our region’s most vulnerable citizens to have access to opportunity. The group met bi-weekly for over a year to research, gain knowledge and formulate solutions to address the startling rates of poverty and poverty-related trends in our city.
Simultaneously, our City administration, led by City Manager Greg Burris and City Council, embarked on “listening” tours within Springfield neighborhoods most impacted by poverty. The results of the Community Listen tours showed that 1) residents are truly engaged and aware of their neighborhood needs, 2) they were equally interested in providing feedback and offering potential solutions, and 3) they were willing to be an extension of the “movement” to embrace the problem and develop action-oriented solutions.
The City was able to accurately provide data, create reports, and graphically display problem areas such as high crime, high unemployment and educational attainment levels, among other indicators.
At the end of the Community Listen series, we found the highest concentration of poverty and need for access to opportunity was geographically located in the northwest quadrant of the city known as Zone 1. We also identified the top concerns of the area included: access to good jobs, access to basic needs such as public safety, child care, higher education, transportation and food and nutrition.
A call to action was made via an 18-month action plan called the Zone Blitz and hundreds of organizations, educational institutions and private sector employers responded by offering assistance resulting in the creation or expansion of plans to address the identified needs. Programs, such as the phenomenal Convoy of Hope Springfield community event drew thousands of citizens to the fairgrounds to learn about access to basic services and an even larger number of people to volunteer to help those in need.
The event, led and organized by the international relief agency Convoy of Hope, was staffed by volunteers from diverse backgrounds and all walks of life to provide everything from shoes to meals to haircuts and community resource information to those attending. But we knew that was just a start. We worked together to create sustainable systems to start focusing on addressing the causes of poverty, rather than just the symptoms.
Access to jobs and economic growth was one of the top concerns for the citizens of Zone 1, the northwest quadrant of Springfield. Through the help of our local Workforce Development Board and the City of Springfield, a job center was opened in Cox Medical Tower on the north campus of Cox Health. Another example of community leadership coming together was the administration of CoxHealth offering to renovate the space to accommodate the new service to the community. In the first year of service, job active job seekers visited over 5,000 times, resulting in over 100 people employed in permanent jobs in since opening in December 2016. The presence of the job center in this north side location has led to increased job fairs, hiring events and training opportunities for the residents of Zone 1.
As the economy has progressively improved in recent years, the need for qualified workers has greatly increased. With unemployment rates less than 3 percent, employees can be difficult to find. However, data has also shown the greatest concentration of unemployed individuals – 32 percent in some neighborhoods – live in the Zone 1 area. They also have lower household income compared to the rest of the city as a whole, are less likely to have health insurance, have lower educational attainment rates, and are most likely to use public transportation.
As a natural progression resulting from the Zone Blitz action plan and the Impacting Poverty Commission’s action plan comes the Change One Thousand Skills Academy, a tangible solution to provide 1,000 individuals with the basic skills they need to become formidable applicants for good-paying jobs. From the time we decided to create Change One Thousand, we focused on creating market-driven workforce solutions.
Change One Thousand is a customer-centered approach to creating a workforce system that builds the foundational skills required for one to succeed in today’s economy. The strength of our economy which requires a well-trained workforce to support our local industries’ competitiveness and standing in a global marketplace.
The basic premise of Change One Thousand is to create a well-developed workforce that has the foundational skill and attributes that make it viable for the industry to make training investments.
We considered job opportunities that offer career pathways in high-growth industries. We relied on local, U.S. Department of Labor and Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC) data to support our findings. We gathered local intelligence via a survey of local industries, which provided us with insights into the availability of local job opportunities.
Through the help of our local utility economic development partners, we identified a consortium of local employers willing to participate in a pilot project focused on creating a pre-employment skills academy. The employers represent companies located in the Partnership Industrial Center East corridor, which is geographically well-positioned to connect with the thousands of job seekers looking for jobs (or better jobs).
We brought the employers together with our education partner (Bryan University) to identify the necessary hard and soft-skills development that would be needed within the pre-employment skills academy curriculum. During face-to-face meetings with the employer committee and our education partner, we were able to build a curriculum for the academy.
Central to the initial success of Change One Thousand was the involvement of the local Job Center staff who completed the enrollment of the applicants into the inaugural Change One Thousand class held Feb. 8 at the Fusion Center in north Springfield. Over 125 individuals applied for the inaugural eight-week academy and the first cohort of 30 were admitted. In a few short weeks, we will be able to gather initial hiring information to determine whether Change One Thousand has been a win-win – provided quality jobs to academy participants and provided skilled workers to local employers. We think this program is a “game changer” for our community.
The efforts of the Impacting Poverty Commission and Zone Blitz partners have been positive in that tangible, system-changing initiatives are being developed and implemented. The IPC has taken a collective approach to creating solutions for our community, as shown by the various contributions of the public and private sectors. We recognize our work is far reaching and rooted in the basic principles of economic development. Change One Thousand is one of the many contributions the Workforce Development Board has made to support the regional efforts aimed at making the Ozarks a collaborative model for all communities.
After all, if we want to grow our economy, providing good jobs for our citizens is a great start.
Mary Ann Rojas is director of Workforce Development for the City of Springfield.