The Foundation works with nonprofit organizations, employers and public agencies to improve how public workforce development funding is being spent in Baltimore and to link effective programs with public funding. The Foundation also works with nonprofit organizations to increase job seekers' access to needed services, including literacy services, transportation, substance abuse treatment, and services for ex-offenders. Finally, The Abell Foundation seeks to strengthen policy initiatives that support low-income families and enhance wages. These initiatives include increasing the minimum wage, increasing access to income supports such as the earned income tax credit, and reforming child support enforcement for low-income, non-custodial parents.

Areas of interest include:

• job training and placement
• job retention and career advancement
• job readiness training
• non-custodial parents
• child support enforcement reform
• income supports

Learn more about the workforce development initiatives funded by The Abell Foundation by visiting Publications/Research. More information is also available in our Highlights below.

Workforce Development Highlights

Baltimore Alliance Careers in Healthcare
The Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare was founded to address unemployment, underemployment, and health care workforce shortage issues in Baltimore City. With funding from The Abell Foundation, and funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Aaron Straus & Lillie Straus Foundation, the Thalheimer Foundation, Open Society Institute – Baltimore, and the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, the Alliance has accomplished the following:

Pre-Allied Health Bridge Program. In response to reports from participating hospitals that many entry-level workers lack the requisite basic skills for post-secondary training leading to higher paying jobs, the Alliance created the Pre-Allied Health Bridge Program. With the help of a curriculum consultant, the Alliance has worked with hospitals to design bridge programs for employees who are not testing high enough to enter in-house training programs that require a ninth grade reading level. Results from the programs are promising: students have advanced at least two grade levels and remain employed at the hospitals.

Career Mapping. The Alliance has developed five hospital-specific career maps and one generic long-term career map that identify healthcare career pathways in administrative, technical, and patient-care positions, illustrating how, with additional education and training, entry-level workers can advance into high-growth/high shortage positions that offer higher wages. Over 3,000 generic career maps have been distributed to Baltimore City hospitals, public schools, community-based organizations and one-stop centers.

Career Coaching. The Alliance pays one-quarter to one-half of the salaries of career coaches in participating hospitals in an effort to improve retention and advancement of frontline workers in entry level skilled healthcare jobs. As of May 2007, 72 percent of the 311 individuals receiving job coaching had completed a training program and 40 percent had advanced to a new job, earning 14 percent more money per hour. Hospitals report reductions in turnover and increases in job performance among employees who participate in coaching.

First Span. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson and Hitachi Foundations, U.S. Department of Labor and The Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, the First Span program is designed to develop an internal pathway were incumbent entry-level workers from housekeeping, dietary and clerical positions could be trained as nursing assistants and then as patient-care technicians (who can carry out several additional tasks normally performed by nurses, such as starting an IV or administering an EKG).

CASA of Maryland
CASA of Maryland opened the Baltimore Workers’ Employment Center at 2224 East Fayette Street on December 19, 2007. The center provides employment placement services for day laborers and low-income workers who begin to assemble as early in the morning in the hopes of being picked up for low-wage paying jobs in construction, landscaping, home improvement, sanitation, and other day-to-day, low- skilled, physical labor intensive jobs. The center was established to reduce the risk of unfair, illegal treatment and exploitative practices faced by many day laborers. CASA provides employment placement services at the Center from 6 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday. Although many of the day laborers served are Latino immigrants, the center also serves other immigrants as well as African-American and white day laborers. In 2008, CASA has placed workers in more than 1,400 temporary and daily jobs and 45 permanent jobs paying a living wage. As a free tax preparation site for the CASH Campaign, CASA has provided over 300 financial consultations to low-income Baltimore workers and assisted 188 low-income families in filing their 2007 income taxes.

CASA has issued membership identification cards to over 300 workers. Several financial institutions as well as the Baltimore City Police Department accept the identification card as a secondary form of identification.

Through a partnership with the Baltimore City Community College, workers participate in “drop-in” English classes, specifically targeted to help workers to learn vocabulary needed in the workplace.

Caroline Center
As a job-training center for hard-to-place, low-skilled women with criminal backgrounds, the Caroline Center Upholstering has become an award-winning site for its earn-as-you-learn program. In addition to becoming proficient in upholstery, the trainees also acquire customer-related skills associated with estimating, pick-up and delivery.

Christopher Place Employment Academy
Homeless, drug- and alcohol-addicted individuals who are determined to change their lives enter Christopher Place Employment Academy and live there for three months. Each participant is housed and clothed and fed seven days a week, and is trained on how to live in the real world, and in particular, how to get a job and hold onto it.

Homeless Persons Representation Project, Inc.
Homeless Persons Representation Project, Inc. (HPRP) has been exploring the feasibility of Maryland adopting a state policy that would require employers to consider a list of factors before making a hiring decision about applicants with criminal records.

Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a powerful work incentive and poverty alleviation tool, helping low-income working families to increase their earnings by as much as 40%.  In 2005, the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service led the Baltimore CASH Campaign in preparing 6,122 tax returns, refunding $8.5 million in federal refunds, and saving approximately $918,300 in tax preparation fees.

Re-Entry Center, Mayor's Office of Employment Development
The one-stop center, located in a major shopping mall, offers a broad array of needed transitional support services and employment-related assistance to over 4000 ex-offenders returning back into their communities in an effort to reduce the recidivism rate.

Rose Street Community Center
The Rose Street Community Center is a "street-corner ministry" that operates out of two row homes in East Baltimore. Since February 2000, with help from The Abell Foundation, the Rose Street Community Center has provided services to hundreds of people, providing small weekly stipends to help them pursue education and training.

St. Ambrose Outreach Center
In the distressed southern Park Heights neighborhood, where drugs, hunger, alcohol, domestic violence, crime, and joblessness are just a few of the pervasive social pathologies that one resident, Sister Charmaine, director of the St. Ambrose Outreach Center, is fighting to turn lives around.

STRIVE Baltimore
STRIVE teaches the unemployed "soft skills," such as the ability to communicate with customers and coworkers and work effectively as a member of a team. The programs also offers, job placement and post-placement support.

Vehicles for Change
Vehicles for Change is a program that puts a car within reach of any low-income family that needs one to get to work. Vehicles for Change demonstrates how ownership of a car can, and often does, make a critical difference.

Year Up
Year Up provides low-income high school graduates and GED recipients, ages 18 to 24, with a year of information technology (IT) and Investment Operations training, leading to technical careers, with starting salaries of over $35,000. In 2006, Year Up opened an office in the Washington, DC area (the office is located in Arlington, VA). The site is posting impressive outcomes:

• 90 percent of graduates are placed in jobs within four months of graduation, averaging $38,000 a year;
• More than 85 percent of Year Up’s corporate partners continue to renew their commitment to future classes; and
• 91 percent of corporate partners express satisfaction with apprentices.

With funding from the Abell Foundation, Year Up is now serving Baltimore area high school graduates. For the first six months of the program, students commute five days a week to classes in Arlington, Virginia. For the second six months of the program, students are placed in internships with employers in Baltimore. Year Up is currently determining the feasibility of opening an office in Baltimore.

Visit the Grantmaking section to learn about the steps involved in making a grant application and to see other recently funded grants.