MAKE PLANS TO ATTEND NAWDP'S 2012 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

May 7-9, 2012

Click Here for More Informationand to Register

Happy Holidays!   

One of the greatest joys of this season

is the opportunity to say THANK YOU and to wish  

you the very best for the New Year

NEW Funding Opportunity

Brown Rudnick Charitable Foundation Offers Grant Program Designed to Help Inner-City Educators

The Brown Rudnick Charitable Foundation Corp. is accepting applications for its Community Grant Program.  The program was created to support frontline educators and will subsidize small, concrete projects to improve inner-city education in Boston, Hartford, Providence, or New York City.  Eligible applicants must be a "frontline educational worker" who is involved in education or a related field in one of the noted communities eligible for grants.   

 http://www.brownrudnickcenter.com/foundation/communitygrant.asp

Deadline: Rolling.

  Reports, Comments and Papers

Gender Wage Gap factsheet illustrates the decline in progress on the gender wage gap. The factsheet includes real earnings, and gender wage gap between women of different race/ethnic backgrounds and white males. 

In the First Half of 2011 Participation Increased 4.9% in Food Stamps but Fell 2.2% in TANF suggests that it is likely that TANF participation has continued to fall. In October, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that in 2011 several states had implemented harsh TANF cuts affecting an estimated 700,000 poor families in total. Some of these cuts were not yet implemented at all or fully in the first half of 2011.

A Detailed Look at Workforce Skill Shortages reports that there were 13.2 million unemployed workers in April and 2.9 million unfilled job openings. April's unemployment rate could have been lowered one percentage point (to 7.7%) if just half of the advertised job vacancies were filled by unemployed workers. The odd pairing of high unemployment and high job vacancies illustrates a structural employment issue, which may have worsened in recent years.

Aligning Community Colleges to Their Local Labor Markets indicates that change is afoot affecting which occupations and industry sectors will produce employment growth, as well as what education credentials, competencies and skills will be required to do those jobs. Community colleges already take steps to address the workforce needs of local employers, but their efforts often are hampered by a lack of detailed, up-to-date information about occupations and skills in demand. A promising, yet still-evolving solution to that problem can be found within the large pool of job openings posted on the Internet.

Resources On Serving Individuals with Disabilities    

The Department of Labor is proposing a new rule that would require federal contractors and subcontractors to set a hiring goal of having 7 percent of their workforces be people with disabilities. The department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs invites public comment on this proposal, which will be published in the Dec. 9 edition of the Federal Register.    

Think Beyond The Label, a national private-public partnership that aids job seekers with disabilities, has launched an online portal that connects job seekers with disabilities to employers actively looking to hire them. This new job-search engine gives free access to nearly 1 million job listings from more than 90,000 screened employers. 

Bullying and Disability Harassment in the Workplace: What Youth Should Know  is designed to help youth, including youth with disabilities, recognize signs of bullying in the workplace, and to recognize how bullying differs from disability harassment. The brief offers examples of bullying situations at work and offers strategies to help address the issue.

Improving High School Outcomes for All Youth: Recommendations for Policy & Practice calls attention to the need to implement policies and practices that will improve high school and post-school outcomes for all students, including those with diverse learning and support needs. The brief outlines recommendations for federal, state and local policy makers.

The Guideposts for Success: Key Areas for the Employment of Youth with Disabilities, developed by NCWD/Youth, are organized around what young people need to be successful in the workplace.  There are five categories, called Guideposts for Success, which can help steer families, institutions and youth themselves through the transition processes. 

Bridget Brown, Executive Director
National Association of Workforce Development Professionals (NAWDP)