HELP US BUILD
YO U R WORKFORCE!
As an employer, your partnership with us is critical in helping our community reach the ambitious goal of filling 64,000 middle-skill jobs in the next four years. We have the workers who want these jobs.
WE NEED YOUR HELP TO MAKE THEIR DREAMS COME TRUE!
contact ivan dรกvila at 512.326.8655, ext. 117 or ivan@willread.org.
The reality about low-skilled adults and why YOU should care: They are the future of your workforce. In the Austin area, the demand for middle-skilled and highskilled workers continues to outpace the supply. Two thirds of our future workforce is already in the workforce—but they are underemployed, and need to learn new skills to fill the middle skill jobs available.
THE FACTS: • Currently, there are 271,000+ Austinites employed in middle-skill jobs. • Middle-skill jobs are expected to grow by 25% to 335,044 in the next five years. •
64,000 middle-skill workers will be needed to meet Austin’s demand in IT, healthcare, and skilled trades by 2021.
• There are about 90,000 working-age adults in the Austin area who have no higher education/ college or career training and cannot access middle-skill jobs. • About 40,000 of these adults need literacy instruction to help them get their GED and/or access career training programs. (See image below)
WITH A FEW MONTHS OF SKILL-BUILDING AND SUPPORT, THE LITERACY COALITIONS MOVES THESE ADULTS INTO MIDDLE-SKILL JOBS AND/OR HIGHER EDUCATION.
10 reasons you should PARTNER WITH THE LITERACY COALITION: 1. We’re one step ahead. The national adult education and workforce sectors have been transforming, and we’ve been just one step ahead, transforming regular adult education programs into workforce training and job placement programs. 2. We have a broad reach. We collaborate with over a dozen learning centers, including our own Learning Center, providing high quality literacy instruction—in reading, writing, math, English and high school diploma exam preparation—to over 1,000 adults annually, over half of whom voluntarily enroll in our additional workforce credential skill-building program to improve their marketable skills and seek improved employment. 3. Our clients are well-supported and ready to work. They receive financial assistance, case management and other wrap-around services to stabilize their lives so they can devote themselves to improving their skills and finding meaningful employment. 4. We know how to address those hardest-to-address soft skill issues you see in your employees—like the ability to work in a team and present a professional demeanor. 5. Our clients have already proven themselves as work-ready. We work with adults who have shown the determination required from our rigorous programming, so they are serious about improving their employment opportunities. 6. Our approach: from theory and practice to tangible work skills. Students enrolled in our collaborative Workforce Infusion program work within an integrated classroom to improve language while simultaneously building marketable work skills. Hands-on experiences such as workplace tours, job shadowing, presentations and hiring fairs expose students to career opportunities beyond their comfort zone and provide realworld connections to employers within the community. 7. We tailor instruction to the learning level and needs of each student to provide the most comprehensive and appropriate experiences possible through classroom instruction and individual case management. 8. We leverage experiential learning. Our Literacy Forward model provides experiential learning opportunities within lessons, allowing students to practice real-world scenarios. Learners participate in role-playing and empowerment activities, which improve communication, leadership, problem-solving and advocacy skills. Our students enter the workforce knowledgeable about the culture of the modern, complex workplace, able to communicate effectively and navigate their community. 9. We support the holistic needs of our students, not only offering digital literacy, basic literacy and language support, but also emergency financial assistance, case management, connection to other community resources, on-going coaching and financial incentives for program completion. 10. High quality literacy instruction is proven to help adults and their families in numerous aspects of their lives, so they are in crisis less often, have better health, and their children do better in school.
WHY NOW? Local Austin/Travis County leaders in government, business, education and workforce development have come together to conduct extensive research and planning, and endorse a Master Community Workforce Development Plan. The Literacy Coalition and its Coalition Partners play a critical role in that plan—meaningfully upskilling low-skilled, employed adults so they can find better jobs, and keep them. The Master Community Workforce Plan analyzed and quantified educational output for the three top-demand industry sectors in Austin (IT, healthcare, and skilled trades), finding that if we are going to meet the coming skill demands with employers through locally-prepared residents, we need to double educational output.
INTEGRATED EDUCATION AND TRAINING Our programming, and that of our partner agencies, uses a new national industry standard for adult education and workforce training called Integrated Education and Training, or IET, which is a service approach that provides adult education and literacy activities concurrently and contextually with workforce preparation activities and/or workforce training for a specific occupation.
THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN: Partnerships with employers are a vital piece of this equation! As a Literacy Champion, you will have the opportunity to: • Hire our clients. • Provide meaningful work exposure and mentoring to our clients, such as worksite tours, mentoring, mock interviewing, and job shadowing (generally through employee volunteerism). • Advise us on industry needs. • Provide financial matching support to scale the public funds we receive to operate these programs. • Host our instruction on-site for their employees leveraging our federal grant funding. We can provide FREE, industry specific, workplace focused English language and literacy instruction at your job site.
JOIN US IN THIS IMPORTANT WORK OF TRANSFORMING THE LIVES OF THE FAMILIES WE SERVE, WHILE ADDRESSING YOUR CRITICAL WORKFORCE NEEDS!
contact ivan dávila at 512.326.8655, ext. 117 or ivan@willread.org.