The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) has funded a variety of system capacity building projects in collaboration with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies and the National Association of Workforce Boards to advance the goal of creating a demand driven workforce investment system. The Demand Driven Incubator Site project is designed to maximize peer-to-peer learning and information sharing while demonstrating the demand driven principles of the Employment & Training Administration. This project is part of President Bush's High Growth Job Training Initiative.
ETA will fund two State Workforce Agencies and seven local Workforce Investment Boards over the next year to support their participation in the Demand Driven Incubator Site project. The sites were chosen competitively for their demonstration of a strategic, demand driven approach to workforce investment and their desire and ability to showcase their activities and partnerships to a wide range of audiences and through various outreach mechanisms.
Specifically, the goals and objectives of the Incubator Sites are to:
- Highlight working examples of state and
local workforce investment areas that are focusing on high growth,
high demand industries;
- Provide a leadership model for the public
workforce system and its education and training partners to develop
workforce solutions for those industries with the greatest demand
for new workers;
- Document the strategies and approaches
used to serve high growth industries and share those experiences
with the public workforce system to facilitate replication;
- Demonstrate the value of leveraging public
workforce dollars with other state and local funding, business
resources, and foundation support to develop and implement workforce
solutions for local employers and provide career opportunities
for local workers.
The selected Incubator Sites are:
State Workforce Agencies
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - Department of Labor
and Industry
- State of Washington
Local Workforce Investment Boards
- Central/Western Maine Local WIB Area 3
- Lewiston, Maine
- CLM Workforce Connection - Ocala, Florida
- Greater Peninsula Workforce Development
Consortium - Hampton, Virginia
- Herkimer, Madison & Oneida Counties WIB
- Utica, New York
- Lancaster County Workforce Investment
Board - Lancaster, Pennsylvania
- Pacific Mountain Workforce Development
Council - Lacey, Washington
- The WorkSource: Gulf Coast Workforce Board
- Houston, Texas
