Four groups get Wired grants totaling $63,000
BYLINE: Meghan Davis
The Piedmont Triad Partnership has awarded $63,000 through three grants to aid career education programs run by the Welfare Reform Liaison Project, Davidson County Community College and the Piedmont Triad Education Consortium.
The partnership is distributing funds from a $15 million U.S. Dept. of Labor Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development grant, or Wired grant, awarded in 2006.
The second round of Focus Talent Development Grants, along with five subgrants awarded previously, bring the partnership's total grant awards to $415,000 thus far; recipients are expected to match their grants internally.
The partnership is offering three types of subgrants -- for entrepreneurial job creation, work force training and talent development -- monthly until November 2007. The grants are aimed at projects in four industry groups: health care, creative enterprises, logistics and distribution, and advanced manufacturing.
Theresa Reynolds, the partnership's Wired project manager, said the grants are meant to foster innovative relationships between community groups.
Because the grants are nonrenewable, the proposals must be sustainable, Reynolds said, and grant applications include a contract with the partnership to meet a given set of performance measures.
The Welfare Reform Liaison Project will use the grant, just under $25,000 and fully matched internally, to expand its Copycents video production and graphic design training program by increasing the number of participants and improving the hands-on experience, creating media projects for nonprofit organizations.
"Students have the opportunity to do hands-on, real work to help nonprofit groups send out their community messages," said Fred Newman, vice president of operations at the Liaison Project. "The Wired grant support adds training in the hands-on piece of the project."
Davidson County Community College will use about $24,000 in grant funds plus $25,607 in matched donations to develop a new program to train licensed practical nurses. The curriculum will be a hybrid of distance-learning and classroom courses, making the program more accessible to working adults.
"There's a tremendous need for licensed practical nurses in the Triad," said Penny Jobe, Davidson's coordinator of institutional grants.
The Piedmont Triad Education Consortium will use $14,000 from the grant matched by $16,000 in-kind to hold a two-day retreat for superintendents from the Triad's 17 school districts to help the them interact with industry leaders from the four clusters.