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1. Career Ladders is an economic engine project that aims to help low-income individuals scale the career ladder to a living wage. Workers receive special training opportunities to improve their hard and soft job skills and specialized case management to guide them through their employment barriers. Various Cedar Valley employers have committed to offering jobs to program participants who have gained the necessary skills to move up the ladder.
Click here to download the Career Ladders Employers Brochure
Click here to download the Career Ladders Workers Brochure
2.
: Opportunity Works is partnering with the University of Northern Iowa’s Regional Business Center (RBC) to launch the MyEntreNet entrepreneurial development system on the eastside of Waterloo. MyEntreNet will create the availability of seed capital, entrepreneurship training, and technical assistance to assist individuals who have a desire to start a business or expand their business in the Consolidated Urban Revitalization Area (CURA). The project will have listening posts forums to help gather input on the issues and needs of current and prospective entrepreneurs. The forums will also help recruit members for the Entrepreneur Task Force to provide support for entrepreneurs. More information on the MyEntreNet program is available at www.myentre.net. Information on the UNI Regional Business Center is available at www.unirbc.org.
3. of the Economic Empowerment Task Team has been working on numerous projects to help individuals and families become financially independent, self-sufficient, and to reduce poverty. Click here for the Financial Education Committee webpage.
is when a family has the financial assets needed to (1) create and
sustain a condition of self-sufficiency over time and (2) take advantage
of opportunities to build more assets over time. This leads to families
building more than income, they are building wealth. It also leads
to making conditions of poverty temporary and infrequent.
Goal: People (and the community)
have the assets to bring about a condition of economic self-sufficiency
and to protect this condition in the future.
Strategy: We will make economic
empowerment more attainable for families in conditions of poverty
by creating better ways for people to (1) earn (2) keep and (3)
grow wealth. When woven together these strands create family economic
empowerment.
Economic Empowerment Focus Areas:
1. Earn more income and financial assets.
2. Keep more income and financial assets.
3. Grow more income and financial assets.
Earn it! - Increase income from work. Increase the number of jobs that provide
family-sustaining wages, benefits and career advancement for people currently in (and vulnerable to) conditions of poverty.
Earn it! - Closing the gap of self-sufficiency. Increase income that comes from sources other
than wages for people in conditions of poverty. Increasing earnings is essential to economic empowerment; however as the economy
transitions there are still times when there are economic gaps. See summary for strategies on how to help people fill these gaps.
Earn it! - Increase links to jobs with family-sustaining wages. Increase links between available jobs
that pay family sustaining wages and people in conditions of poverty. Increase support for people in conditions of poverty to get these jobs.
Keep it! - Increase skills and knowledge for self-sufficiency. Increase the skills and knowledge of people in
conditions of poverty to protect and wisely use their income and financial assets. Financial assets are the basis for financial stability,
leverage and growth. Also, increase legitimate financial services that help people in conditions of poverty.
Keep it! - Convert income to wealth. Increase the number of people in conditions of poverty who convert
income to sustainable assets and family wealth.
Keep it! - Secure costs of living. Decrease the costs of living for people in conditions of poverty.
Grow it! - Increase political will for self-sufficiency. Increase action from many sectors targets to transform
the economy to decrease conditions of poverty. Increase awareness of poverty as a community development and economic development issue that must be addressed.
Grow it! - Increase food and agriculture innovation. Increase actions to reinvent food systems so that they
increase earnings for farmers and contribute to a sustainable region.
Grow it! - Business start-ups. Increase successful business start-ups that create better incomes for people in conditions of poverty.
Grow it! - Increase capacity for creating self-sufficiency jobs. Increase access to resources that transforms the private sector and
communities to increase jobs with self-sustaining wage. This outcome is where efforts must be focused to address the issues of sustainability.
Key Indicator: Increase assets to bring about economic self-sufficiency, especially for people facing chronic
and persistent barriers to self-sufficiency.
Connection to Assets: Focusing on this priority primarily helps to build human and financial assets.
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