Podcast Transcript
Intro
What could happen if we take our workforce to new heights? Workforce on the Mic, presented by NAWDP, brings you inspirational stories, innovative solutions, and expert insights that are shaping the future of the workforce.
Tune in for dynamic conversations that motivate and transform the workforce development community. And now, on to the episode.
00:00:28 Alexis Franks
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, all you workforce warriors across the country.
00:00:35 Alexis Franks
My name is Alexis Franks, your Director of Membership with the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals.
00:00:44 Alexis Franks
And welcome to another episode of Workforce on the Mic presented by NADA.
00:00:50 Alexis Franks
Today’s episode focuses on something so many workforce leaders talk about, but may be hard to truly achieve at scale.
00:01:00 Alexis Franks
And that’s deep, partnership-driven workforce solutions that meet people where they are and move them quickly towards jobs.
00:01:11 Alexis Franks
And we’re joined today by Earl Martin Phelan, CEO of Great Jobs KC in SkilledUS.
00:01:19 Alexis Franks
And Great Jobs Casey is really known for challenging our traditional workforce models and building a bold collaborative approach to bring together employers, education, and community organizations into true alignment for job seekers.
00:01:36 Alexis Franks
And through their initiative, they’ve reached thousands of individuals.
00:01:40 Alexis Franks
So I’m very excited to get to speak with Earl today and learn a little bit more about the work that they’re doing and how we can replicate as workforce warriors in our programs today.
00:01:51 Alexis Franks
So Earl, welcome to you.
00:01:53 Earl Phalen
Thanks, Alexis.
00:01:54 Earl Phalen
Great to be here.
00:01:55 Alexis Franks
Yes, absolutely.
00:01:56 Alexis Franks
So we’re going to do what we call passing the mic.
00:01:59 Alexis Franks
So Earl, I will pass you the mic this morning.
00:02:01 Alexis Franks
And then for our listeners that may not be familiar, can you briefly just give us a little insight on who you are, where you are, and the work that you’re doing?
00:02:12 Earl Phalen
Sure.
00:02:12 Earl Phalen
So name is Earl Martin Phelan, as you shared.
00:02:17 Earl Phalen
Blessed to come through some great public schools here a little bit outside of Boston, Massachusetts, a small town called Norwood, but was attracted to Kansas City through an incredible organization that when I arrived, focused on giving college scholarships to those who wanted to get a degree as a pathway to a good job.
00:02:39 Earl Phalen
And the program was called KC Scholars.
00:02:41 Earl Phalen
And we awarded $50,000 college scholarships to 500 adults a year.
00:02:49 Earl Phalen
And my board chair at that point said, that half of the kids who are coming out of high school are choosing college, but half of the kids are choosing to get careers.
00:03:01 Earl Phalen
And will you develop a program that will help those who want to go from high school to a good paying job?
00:03:08 Earl Phalen
Would you develop a program?
00:03:10 Earl Phalen
And that’s how we developed the Great Jobs KC program, serving all adults 17 and older in Kansas City.
00:03:20 Earl Phalen
So it’s been a blessing to create that program.
00:03:23 Earl Phalen
We’ve gotten incredibly generous philanthropic support.
00:03:26 Earl Phalen
And now we’re working, obviously, to get SNAP and WIOA and
00:03:31 Earl Phalen
maybe Workforce Pell should that become a resource for us to serve more and more adults in Kansas City?
00:03:38 Alexis Franks
Awesome, awesome.
00:03:39 Alexis Franks
And I know, Earl, in getting prepared for our episode, we looked a lot into the work that has gone into establishing Great Jobs, KC, and how many people you’ve really impacted, young people and adults.
00:03:54 Alexis Franks
So can you help us dig a little bit deeper and what workforce challenges really led you to begin looking at this partnership-based approach to helping youth move into great careers?
00:04:08 Earl Phalen
Yeah, I mean, we were blessed to come out of the gates getting a $50 million grant from the Kauffman Foundation to build the infrastructure and team.
00:04:17 Earl Phalen
But it was, they made that big of a grant because the workforce ecosystem in Kansas City was very fragmented.
00:04:25 Earl Phalen
A lot of small programs, helping 25 adults get jobs a year, helping 100, I think the largest was helping 215 adults per year get jobs.
00:04:35 Earl Phalen
And so we said, wow, this is a fragmented system.
00:04:38 Earl Phalen
Everybody’s going to the employers, making the same pictures.
00:04:42 Earl Phalen
Everybody’s talking to the community colleges about being more agile in their ability to adapt to what the workforce needs.
00:04:50 Earl Phalen
And very few people really supporting the scholars on their journey.
00:04:55 Earl Phalen
So we said, what if we could create a
00:04:57 Earl Phalen
collaborative model that built on the strengths of the ecosystem, didn’t put Great Jobs KC in a place to compete, but actually to help organize it.
00:05:05 Earl Phalen
So we said, we’ll do the community outreach.
00:05:09 Earl Phalen
And at our peak, we had to slow down a little bit, but at our peak, we had 1,000 adults per month signing up because we were going to 164 community events, to barbershops, to sporting events, to churches.
00:05:21 Earl Phalen
We were just going where we knew our families were and letting them know, hey, there’s an opportunity for you
00:05:27 Earl Phalen
if you’re interested in getting a better paying job.
00:05:29 Earl Phalen
And for us, our recruitment is really if you’re 17 or older and you’re making under $45,000, you’re eligible for the program.
00:05:36 Earl Phalen
So those were the things.
00:05:38 Earl Phalen
Then we said, well, wait a second.
00:05:39 Earl Phalen
We listened to employers.
00:05:40 Earl Phalen
Employers said, we need, yeah, we want the hard skills, but we need the soft skills.
00:05:46 Earl Phalen
Showing up on time, writing a professional e-mail,
00:05:50 Earl Phalen
If you have a conflict with your boss or peer, managing that in an effective way.
00:05:55 Earl Phalen
And then we listened to our scholars who said, hey, we could use some help with budgeting and finances, open up my first bank account, et cetera, et cetera.
00:06:03 Earl Phalen
We need some help with resume writing.
00:06:04 Earl Phalen
We need to have the tools to dress for success.
00:06:07 Earl Phalen
And so we put together month-long professional workshops, again, but in collaboration, we said, let’s do this right where you are.
00:06:15 Earl Phalen
So libraries, boys and girls clubs, churches, schools, let’s do this
00:06:20 Earl Phalen
where you are so that we can take that away.
00:06:23 Earl Phalen
Then we also listened and heard from our adults, just from listening to them and looking at the research, what are the barriers to success?
00:06:32 Earl Phalen
We have an 83% graduation rate, which is pretty extraordinary for an adult.
00:06:39 Earl Phalen
Our average scholar is 32 years old and has two children, and we’re 60% women, 40% men.
00:06:45 Earl Phalen
So very, very high completion rates.
00:06:47 Earl Phalen
What gets in the way?
00:06:49 Earl Phalen
Transportation,
00:06:50 Earl Phalen
childcare, housing, those were some of the pieces.
00:06:54 Earl Phalen
So we said, let’s partner with the groups that provide childcare.
00:06:57 Earl Phalen
Let’s partner with Uber as it relates to, hey, we’re going to have a special code to get you from place A to place B for the first month of your work when you don’t yet have that check on the stable income.
00:07:09 Earl Phalen
Let’s help you with housing stability.
00:07:12 Earl Phalen
We’re partnering with this group called Driven Development.
00:07:14 Earl Phalen
They actually are providing a affordable lease to
00:07:20 Earl Phalen
own program for many of our scholars.
00:07:22 Earl Phalen
We’re starting with 250 scholars this year, and that will expand every year so that more and more scholars can get the housing they need.
00:07:30 Earl Phalen
And then we said, let’s partner.
00:07:32 Earl Phalen
Let’s not run the programs ourselves for the occupational skills.
00:07:35 Earl Phalen
Let’s partner with programs that we vet, but at community college, trade schools,
00:07:44 Earl Phalen
for-profit and nonprofit training providers, let’s partner with you.
00:07:48 Earl Phalen
And the only way I will select you is if you have an 80% success rate so that 80% of your scholars graduate and get the certification we need.
00:07:56 Earl Phalen
And then we said, let’s partner with employers.
00:07:57 Earl Phalen
So we have over 100 employers in Kansas City who have signed an MOU with us saying, we want to take a look at your scholars once they’re ready for employment.
00:08:07 Earl Phalen
So that’s kind of what we’ve done.
00:08:10 Earl Phalen
We’re blessed.
00:08:12 Earl Phalen
We started in 2023.
00:08:14 Earl Phalen
We’ve served over 10,000 scholars since we started.
00:08:17 Earl Phalen
Over 5,000 are coming through our program this year.
00:08:20 Earl Phalen
And our graduates are, as I said, they’re earning 11,500 more than when they started.
00:08:27 Earl Phalen
Plus they have full benefits for themselves and their children.
00:08:29 Earl Phalen
So it’s really started to organize the ecosystem
00:08:33 Earl Phalen
so that it’s an easier path and we’re kind of serving as a bridge from there are a lot of people who are unemployed or underemployed.
00:08:40 Earl Phalen
There are a lot of employers who have thousands of job openings and we just try to provide that bridge from that place to a good paying job.
00:08:50 Alexis Franks
Absolutely.
00:08:50 Alexis Franks
And there’s a lot to unpack there.
00:08:52 Alexis Franks
And I think you you started out with what all of our listeners may need to hear that we really position ourselves not as a competitor, but as a strategic partner within the ecosystem.
00:09:05 Alexis Franks
And you can tell the way that you selected your partners as well, that this is really how you organize the entire ecosystem to benefit the person that we’re serving and the outcomes speak for themselves.
00:09:20 Alexis Franks
themselves, right?
00:09:20 Alexis Franks
So if you’re placing an individual into a position or into a career where they’re earning sustainable wages, that means the system is working.
00:09:30 Alexis Franks
The system is acting exactly as it is supposed to.
00:09:34 Alexis Franks
And that’s a key gem for our listeners to take away from today.
00:09:38 Alexis Franks
We’re not competitors.
00:09:39 Alexis Franks
We are all in the business of serving individuals that need assistance with getting into good employment.
00:09:47 Alexis Franks
And if we approach it from that perspective, it can change the outcome significantly.
00:09:52 Alexis Franks
So that was a huge piece.
00:09:54 Alexis Franks
And I love to see that has come together for you all.
00:09:58 Alexis Franks
And we operate, there’s a lot of workforce programs that operate in similar small communities.
00:10:05 Alexis Franks
that’s doing the best that they can with the funding that they have, and they’re seeking to partner in other areas with employers and colleges and other resources.
00:10:16 Alexis Franks
So what do you feel, or what has, can you tell has made the difference from a traditional workforce collaboration in the work that you’ve done with great jobs, Casey?
00:10:28 Earl Phalen
Yeah, I think that, you know, we’re very blessed to have
00:10:31 Earl Phalen
an extraordinary team, as I’m sure many of your listeners do.
00:10:36 Earl Phalen
We were blessed to get the capital from Kauffin Foundation.
00:10:39 Earl Phalen
As I said, it was first $50 million, and then they put in another $60 million because we were exceeding our objectives.
00:10:46 Earl Phalen
So we were blessed to have that.
00:10:48 Earl Phalen
I also believe that because it, to your point, because it was a collaboration, right?
00:10:55 Earl Phalen
So we were actually, we’re recruiting students.
00:10:58 Earl Phalen
We’re preparing students.
00:10:59 Earl Phalen
If they don’t successfully complete our 30 days, the professional skills workshops, they don’t go to occupational skills training.
00:11:08 Earl Phalen
It’s also tuition free to our scholars.
00:11:10 Earl Phalen
So that helps.
00:11:11 Earl Phalen
And so I think because we came in from a place that, wait a second, we’re going to find really talented people who are looking for a better future and better economic
00:11:20 Earl Phalen
standing for their families.
00:11:22 Earl Phalen
We’re going to screen them.
00:11:23 Earl Phalen
We’re going to support them.
00:11:25 Earl Phalen
Everybody gets a one-on-one, we call them scholar advocates, but somebody else might call them a case manager who’s touching base with you every two weeks to make sure you’re doing okay.
00:11:34 Earl Phalen
Is something getting in the way of your success?
00:11:35 Earl Phalen
How can we break down those barriers so you continue to persist?
00:11:39 Earl Phalen
I think because it was, because we approached it from a collaborative perspective and everybody wins, right?
00:11:48 Earl Phalen
The training providers win and community colleges win because we’re recruiting the students, we’re supporting the students, and we’re helping you get high graduation rates and high employment rates.
00:11:58 Earl Phalen
And we’re sharing the data that, hey, your graduates are making almost $12,000 more when they compete.
00:12:04 Earl Phalen
I think the employers won because we listened to them.
00:12:08 Earl Phalen
They were the ones who said, you have to do these professional skills workshops.
00:12:11 Earl Phalen
We’re getting folks who, yeah, they’ve got the credential, but they don’t have the soft skills and it’s hurting them.
00:12:18 Earl Phalen
We have a 91% retention rate one year after getting your first job because we keep that support with the scholar advocate and the other resources all the way through the first year of employment.
00:12:30 Earl Phalen
So I think part of our success has been we’re
00:12:34 Earl Phalen
very metrics driven.
00:12:35 Earl Phalen
We try to get our scholars to jobs that pay 45 to $125,000 a year plus benefits.
00:12:42 Earl Phalen
The only exception really is in healthcare, where our CNAs and QMAs and some others make 35, but they come back to us in six months, get training, and now all of a sudden they’re making 45 to 65,000 a year plus benefits.
00:12:55 Earl Phalen
So I think collaboration has been the key.
00:12:58 Earl Phalen
A really good team has been the key.
00:12:59 Earl Phalen
And then obviously having the resources has also been essential.
00:13:05 Alexis Franks
And that makes a huge difference in all of our workforce programs.
00:13:09 Alexis Franks
And it’s so important for us to be able to show those
00:13:12 Alexis Franks
outcomes to continue to have access to those resources.
00:13:15 Alexis Franks
So that collaboration is definitely key.
00:13:18 Alexis Franks
And I don’t want to skip over a piece that you said as well of your role or the role of Great Jobs, KC, and what it looks like in recruiting the individuals that are scholars.
00:13:30 Earl Phalen
Yes.
00:13:31 Alexis Franks
That’s a huge piece.
00:13:32 Alexis Franks
Our traditional workforce programs can be somewhat limited in the way that they recruit for individuals to participate, either they’ve got their connections
00:13:42 Alexis Franks
with the schools, but you mentioned a couple of times in our conversation today that you really meet them where they are.
00:13:49 Alexis Franks
So what does that look like when you’re trying to initially get a person engaged in workforce services?
00:13:55 Alexis Franks
What systems make it possible for that recruitment to actually stick?
00:14:00 Earl Phalen
Yeah, we’re just we’re blessed.
00:14:02 Earl Phalen
Jen Clark is the head of our and Anita Daniels are the head of our community engagement.
00:14:08 Earl Phalen
And we call it community engagement because that’s really what it what it is.
00:14:12 Earl Phalen
And so part of that piece is we have a 12 person team that is out at events every day, nights, weekends.
00:14:21 Earl Phalen
They are wherever you would find our families.
00:14:25 Earl Phalen
And so that has been critical.
00:14:27 Earl Phalen
They have an iPad and it’s 5 minutes when we meet you, right?
00:14:31 Earl Phalen
It’s not a long process, but it’s 5 minutes when we meet you.
00:14:33 Earl Phalen
Hey, I’m with Great Jobs KC.
00:14:36 Earl Phalen
We help folks get jobs that pay $45,000 to $125,000 a year.
00:14:40 Earl Phalen
It’s A short-term training program.
00:14:42 Earl Phalen
Would you be interested?
00:14:43 Earl Phalen
Yes, I’m interested.
00:14:44 Earl Phalen
We get your information, but it’s just 5 minutes.
00:14:47 Earl Phalen
Because sometimes you’re coming out of the Target with your kids.
00:14:50 Earl Phalen
You’re coming out of the hair salon or what have you.
00:14:53 Earl Phalen
You’re coming out of church.
00:14:54 Earl Phalen
So we
00:14:55 Earl Phalen
say, hey, just let’s be quick there.
00:14:57 Earl Phalen
And then within 24 hours, you get a phone call so that we get to know you.
00:15:03 Earl Phalen
What pathway might you be interested in?
00:15:06 Earl Phalen
We have healthcare, IT, construction, supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, right?
00:15:12 Earl Phalen
So what pathway might you be interested in?
00:15:14 Earl Phalen
You don’t know?
00:15:15 Earl Phalen
Okay, let’s open up the Great Jobs website with you and you can see a two-minute video on 100 different careers that might be of interest with you, right?
00:15:25 Earl Phalen
healthcare has, you know, our healthcare partners have 110 different types of jobs within the healthcare industry.
00:15:30 Earl Phalen
So we walk that through with you and start to, okay, great.
00:15:33 Earl Phalen
Now we know that.
00:15:35 Earl Phalen
What supports might you need?
00:15:37 Earl Phalen
Is childcare good for you?
00:15:39 Earl Phalen
Is your housing stable?
00:15:41 Earl Phalen
Do you have a reliable transportation?
00:15:44 Earl Phalen
What might get in the way?
00:15:45 Earl Phalen
And then we start to figure out how we can connect you to our 42 social service agency partners who might be able to help you with that.
00:15:53 Earl Phalen
And now I’m going to connect you after this call.
00:15:55 Earl Phalen
You’re going to get a call within a week from your scholar advocate.
00:15:59 Earl Phalen
And that person’s there to be with you from day one
00:16:02 Earl Phalen
all the way through the end of your first year of employment.
00:16:05 Earl Phalen
And they’re just there to be a listening, a soundboard just to help you out.
00:16:09 Earl Phalen
They’ll send a text, they’ll give you a call.
00:16:11 Earl Phalen
Anytime you need anything, that’s who you.
00:16:13 Earl Phalen
So that process and that thoughtful kind of what I would say intake process allows us to know our scholars and lets them know we’re partners with them.
00:16:22 Earl Phalen
We’re going to walk this journey with them and help them overcome whatever may get in the way of their success.
00:16:29 Earl Phalen
So that community engagement team and that intake process, I think,
00:16:32 Earl Phalen
are a critical reason why we have such, 83% graduation rate, which is very, very high.
00:16:40 Earl Phalen
And then the successful, obviously, North Star, which is getting that really good job that helps you make more for yourself and your families.
00:16:48 Alexis Franks
I love that you mentioned all of the work that goes into that really assessing where the need might be for the individual and then seeking to go out and find them wherever they are, wherever they are.
00:17:01 Alexis Franks
So, and big, big, big shout out to all of our career managers, our scholar advocates, our caseworkers, all of those individuals that make that work happen every single day.
00:17:14 Alexis Franks
Without you, we would definitely need to be looking for some people to
00:17:18 Alexis Franks
serve.
00:17:18 Alexis Franks
So you all are putting in that work every single day, and we appreciate you.
00:17:23 Alexis Franks
And Earl, you mentioned at your peak, enrolling 1,000 people per month.
00:17:29 Alexis Franks
Those are huge, huge, huge numbers.
00:17:32 Alexis Franks
For that type of success to continue to happen, what circumstances, what type of environment can we as workforce professionals create for anyone that might be trying to scale their programs and serve more people?
00:17:46 Earl Phalen
Yeah, to us, the resources are critical.
00:17:50 Earl Phalen
So we leverage SNAP E&T.
00:17:53 Earl Phalen
We leverage career savings accounts.
00:17:57 Earl Phalen
We leverage WIOA as some resources.
00:18:02 Earl Phalen
There are obviously many others.
00:18:04 Earl Phalen
And we’re watching very carefully Workforce Pell.
00:18:07 Earl Phalen
And how do the rules and regulations for that play out?
00:18:11 Earl Phalen
And could that be a resource that allows us to serve, continue to serve, not 5,000 scholars a year, but 10,000 scholars a year with, and just making those resources available has been a critical part of our ability to serve all the adults who are wanting to change their lives or improve their economic status.
00:18:37 Alexis Franks
I love that you mentioned that as well, the work with the Workforce Pell.
00:18:42 Alexis Franks
Even though we’re as a strategic partner, we have partnerships with training providers, community colleges and universities.
00:18:50 Alexis Franks
So a lot of our workforce programs may think, you know, I’m not getting these resources directly, so maybe they don’t help me scale.
00:18:59 Alexis Franks
When you’re positioned in the right way and you have the right community partners and schools and institutions,
00:19:07 Alexis Franks
at the table, that makes you a stronger ecosystem.
00:19:11 Alexis Franks
So I love your perspective of how it’s not about who gets the resource, but how can we as an ecosystem use that resource to increase our impact and scale our programs?
00:19:24 Alexis Franks
So that’s a huge, really good point that our listeners can hopefully take away from today as well.
00:19:32 Alexis Franks
So for our workforce professionals that are maybe just in the beginning of thinking about how they can build the ecosystem to scale their programs or thinking about how they can partner with the right people at the right place at the right time, what are some things that you think they share or advice that you might have for those that may be just in the beginning stages?
00:19:54 Earl Phalen
I think for those who are at the beginning, I mean, we’re only three years old with Great Jobs KC.
00:19:58 Earl Phalen
So I still think we’re young and learning.
00:20:02 Earl Phalen
I think one of the critical pieces is having high standards for partners.
00:20:07 Earl Phalen
And so part of that comes through a written memorandum of understanding, an MOU.
00:20:13 Earl Phalen
Part of that comes from setting up a cadence
00:20:16 Earl Phalen
where you regularly talk about successes, well, goals for the collaboration, successes and challenges, and you have honest conversations as it relates to successes and challenges and the challenges.
00:20:31 Earl Phalen
So that has really helped us.
00:20:34 Earl Phalen
I think listening,
00:20:35 Earl Phalen
very closely to employers.
00:20:38 Earl Phalen
Because at the end of the day, if somebody gets a credential and they don’t get a job, we have failed.
00:20:43 Earl Phalen
And in my opinion, Great Jobs has failed.
00:20:46 Earl Phalen
So we have to listen to what is it that the employers want and need, both hard skills and soft skills.
00:20:54 Earl Phalen
So I think that’s another important part.
00:20:58 Earl Phalen
You mentioned it, which is, you know, if
00:21:02 Earl Phalen
If the resource, if you look at your cost model, our program costs about $5,000 per scholar.
00:21:07 Earl Phalen
It varies, obviously.
00:21:09 Earl Phalen
An LPN is more expensive than maybe a commercial driver type of thing.
00:21:14 Earl Phalen
But just roughing it with all in terms of credential and wraparound services, about $5,000.
00:21:21 Earl Phalen
per scholar.
00:21:22 Earl Phalen
So if you can somehow have a partner that takes the major burden of that, which is the training costs, off of your docket, and all of a sudden, now that 3,000 is covered by a state, federal, or other resource, now your program costs 2,000.
00:21:37 Earl Phalen
And now you have a really good case to make to philanthropic investors that, hey, we want your philanthropy, but if you give us $2,000, we leverage another 3,000.
00:21:48 Earl Phalen
And that’s a model that a lot of philanthropic donors
00:21:51 Earl Phalen
want to support because they see a pathway possibly to sustainability.
00:21:56 Earl Phalen
So those are some of the early things to think about.
00:21:59 Earl Phalen
And then what is your system to capture data?
00:22:02 Earl Phalen
We were so shocked when we talked to a lot of our training providers.
00:22:06 Earl Phalen
They didn’t know persistence rates.
00:22:07 Earl Phalen
They didn’t know why students dropped out of the program.
00:22:10 Earl Phalen
They didn’t know what the cost of enrolling a student was or, you know, a client acquisition.
00:22:17 Earl Phalen
I know it’s corporate speak, but they didn’t know what that cost was.
00:22:21 Earl Phalen
They didn’t, they just didn’t understand the key metrics that you have to look at as a young nonprofit who’s trying to say, we’re adding value to the community.
00:22:32 Earl Phalen
You have to have, I believe, you have to have clear metrics.
00:22:36 Earl Phalen
and we actually didn’t, Mathematica did an independent evaluation of our program, which most wouldn’t do in year two of their program, but we did it because we knew that having that independent validation
00:22:48 Earl Phalen
83% completion rate, 11,500 more our graduates earn when they complete our program, 91% retention after one year.
00:22:57 Earl Phalen
Having that metric, those metrics then allowed us to go to other philanthropic resources and ask for 55 million, ask for 100 million, ask for et cetera, et cetera.
00:23:08 Earl Phalen
But it also helped us with the state agencies that the workforce, kind of development agencies who were saying, yeah, we don’t know you.
00:23:18 Earl Phalen
of these other programs that have been around for a decade or two decades.
00:23:21 Earl Phalen
We know these community colleges, but we don’t know you.
00:23:25 Earl Phalen
And so that external validation really helped us in making our case that, no, we’re deserving of WIOA, we’re deserving of SNAP, we’re deserving of Workforce Pell, and we’re deserving of other resources that are available to great and impactful workforce development programs.
00:23:44 Alexis Franks
And that’s honestly great advice for any of our listeners today.
00:23:49 Alexis Franks
And if I heard you correctly, there were a lot of pieces to it.
00:23:53 Alexis Franks
But essentially, we cannot do this work alone.
00:23:56 Alexis Franks
There’s not one single program that can operate in a way that can have meaningful impact by itself.
00:24:04 Alexis Franks
So really, again, positioning ourselves in the ecosystem where we’re a partner.
00:24:10 Alexis Franks
And that can make a complete difference in how we’re supported and funded and the impact that we have.
00:24:16 Alexis Franks
So those are all great pieces to take away from our conversation today.
00:24:20 Alexis Franks
And Earl, we have what we call mic drop moments on workforce on the mic.
00:24:25 Alexis Franks
So you’ve given us quite a few mic drop moments for today.
00:24:29 Alexis Franks
And it’s really changing the mindset.
00:24:32 Alexis Franks
and how we’re providing services along with our partners.
00:24:36 Alexis Franks
What does collaboration look like for us?
00:24:38 Alexis Franks
Are there shared outcomes and goals and successes and challenges?
00:24:42 Alexis Franks
And having that open and honest communication really can make the difference for the individual, the scholar, the customer or job seeker that we’re working with every single day.
00:24:53 Alexis Franks
So we definitely appreciate having you today with us, Earl.
00:24:57 Alexis Franks
Again, we appreciate all of the work that’s happening in Kansas City.
00:25:01 Alexis Franks
And for anyone that’s interested in learning a little bit more, what is the best way to learn about Great Jobs KC or to get in touch with you?
00:25:10 Earl Phalen
Yeah, go to greatjobskc.org and learn more about our program.
00:25:15 Earl Phalen
Reach out to us.
00:25:16 Earl Phalen
We’re willing to partner and collaborate with anybody.
00:25:19 Earl Phalen
We actually have a spinoff that is working right now in eight other states to help replicate this program and
00:25:29 Earl Phalen
reach out to us.
00:25:30 Earl Phalen
We think we can end poverty in a major U.S.
00:25:33 Earl Phalen
city.
00:25:33 Earl Phalen
So we’d love to partner with you or share anything that would be helpful to you being successful in your community.
00:25:41 Alexis Franks
Great.
00:25:42 Alexis Franks
Thank you so much.
00:25:43 Alexis Franks
And thank you again for joining us today.
00:25:45 Alexis Franks
We look forward to continuing our connection and hopefully seeing you soon in the near future and continuing our engagement.
00:25:52 Earl Phalen
Thank you so much, Alexis.
00:25:53 Earl Phalen
Great to be with you today.
Conclusion
Thank you for listening to Workforce on the Mic, presented by NAWDP. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the podcasts.
To learn more about NAWDP and to become a member, visit www.nawdp.org. That’s www.nawdp.org.
