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The head of a St. Louis-based workforce training center on Friday told a group of local poverty fighters that a collaborative approach to workforce development can be crafted from virtually nothing.
“The majority of the problems we run into are people problems,” Carolyn Seward, CEO of Metropolitan Education and Training Center in St. Louis, told the annual meeting of Step Up Savannah Inc.
She outlined how the former home of a Wellston, Mo., small motors company has been transformed into the MET Center producing jobs and futures through a combination of government, universities, employers and nonprofits.
“The MET Center is alive and well,” she told the group meeting at Savannah Technical College’s Eckburg Auditorium. “It’s a campus of learning.”
This year’s theme was “Make it work, Savannah” Building successful partnerships for workforce training.”
Seward’s program has completed 19,253 assessments, 3,726 skill trainings, 5,375 job placements at average $9 hourly wage. That same effort has produced $18.7 million in estimated economic impact this year with 1,000 individuals placed in employment, she said.
The effort relied on a buy-in by employers, Seward said. She brought to the table more than 20 years of management experience in the private sector as well as a background in the need to provide hard data on programs and their progress.
“We talked about them and how we could help them and how they could help us,” she said. “You need to show business on paper what you are doing,”
Suzanne Donovan, executive director of Step Up, told the group Savannah’s present 26.6 percent poverty rate over five years remains “embarrassingly high.”
In some Savannah neighborhoods, Donovan said, 40 percent or more of the people are living below the poverty level.
“What do we want to look like Savannah?” she asked. “This is not an issue that one organization can solve. …This is our community’s issue to work on together, to find a way in for every one of us to make a difference.”
The indicators, while sobering, are not unique to Savannah, she said.
“But we’re small enough in size – with enough sharp, caring people in Savannah – that we can set some bold goals together and shift our sights to creating a culture of shared prosperity. … We can make it work Savannah, but we have to find a way in for everyone.”
Afterward, Donovan said the picture brought by Seward should provide hope.
“There’s nothing that St. Louis has that Savannah doesn’t,” she said.
Goodwill of the Coastal Empire was presented with Step Up’s annual Workplace Innovator Award in recognition of a local employer who uses innovative business practices to retain their lower-wage workers.
