The Jewish Healthcare Foundation of Pittsburgh and United Way of Allegheny County have unveiled a joint initiative to help the region’s community-based organizations enhance career education opportunities for at-risk youth.
The initiative, Pathways to Health Careers Fellowship, will help organizations with career preparation for underprivileged middle school and high school students. The initiative is the latest in a broad-based campaign to prepare Pittsburgh’s workforce of the future by aligning schools, employers and youth development agencies around career preparation.
More than a year ago, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development launched a campaign, Pittsburgh Regional Compact, an employer-educator partnership designed to develop our region's workforce for 21st-century jobs. Since then, Health Careers Futures, an operating arm of JHF, launched the Center for Career Learning and United Way declared “Motivating Kids to Succeed in School” as a major initiative.
Stimulating interest in technical and professional schools would help fill critical vacancies for the region’s industries, while positioning students for rewarding career pathways that don’t necessarily require college degrees, notes Karen Wolk Feinstein, CEO of JHF and HCF. JHF approved up to $200,000 to support the Fellowship over two years. United Way has committed $150,000.
To meet these goals, the nation’s leading experts in career education and workforce development convened in Pittsburgh this month for the first national summit to address the challenges of providing careers to at-risk high school students.
“The best and the brightest came together to help guarantee that we won’t lose our kids in high school,” says Wolk Feinstein. “Pittsburgh called the first summit of its kind and leaders responded. We’re moving toward a model of what a community that wraps itself around a guarantee that all young people will succeed looks like.”
Writer: Debra Smit
Source: Karen Wolk Feinstein, Jewish Healthcare Foundation