Young people in poor neighborhoods are looking at 100,000 new job opportunities and a chance to undergo the right training to help them land one.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has recruited fifteen large American companies to help create the “100,000 Opportunities Initiative”, offering job training, internships, and apprenticeship programs to help prepare 16-24 year-old youth for “middle skill jobs” that don’t require a college degree. Currently, there are about 3.5 million of those jobs available in the U.S.
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“It’s very personal for me, having grown up in public housing and understanding what it was like to be that poor kid,” Schultz told the Wall Street Journal. He and his wife are also giving $30 million from their family foundation to create local job training programs and mentoring projects within the initiative.
Other companies include Alaska Airlines, which is giving grants to improve technical training for high school students, CVS, which is pushing an apprenticeship program for pharmacy technicians in 40 cities, and Microsoft, which is placing 130 tech industry experts into high schools to help with training programs.
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“In America, your ZIP code should never determine your destiny,” U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said about the initiative. “Breaking down barriers to employment for young people doesn’t just help the individual workers – it benefits entire communities and the economy at large.”
The initiative kicks off a series of job fairs in August starting in Chicago, Illinois, with more planned in other cities in coming months.
(WATCH the Wall Street Journal video below and READ more at CBS News) Photo by GotCredit, CC — Story Tip from carilyn
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