How did three of Boston's community-based organizations who often saw each other as adversaries competing for a shrinking slice of the workforce development pie end up as collaborators in a 1 million dollar partnership that is attracting national attention?

For the Asian American Civic Association (AACA), La Alianza Hispana, and the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, it is a story of communicating on many levels, learning to trust each other, and finding common ground. The result was the Partnership for Automotive Career Education (PACE), a training and career advancement initiative that will help low-income Boston area residents and incumbent lower-level automotive workers move up the career ladder toward economic self-sufficiency and family-sustaining wages. Other key members of the partnership are Sullivan Tire, Bridgestone Firestone, Village Automotive Group, the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association, Madison Park Vocational High School, and Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology. AACA serves as the lead agency and fiscal manager.

From the Back to the Front Burner, Slowly
The idea for an automotive repair training program was first hatched at AACA in 1988 when education staff and agency management believed that Asian men were not particularly well-served by the workforce development system of that time. Asian males, many of whom still work sixty hours a week as waiters or cooks in Chinese restaurants, had few options beyond survival English classes and office skills training programs, which attracted mostly women. The idea sat on the back burner until fall 2002 when executive directors at AACA, Alianza and the Urban League found themselves at the same table among five community partners in the new Boston Biotechnology Workforce Partnership, which was aimed at training people for what the industry expected to be a large amount of biomanufacturing jobs. The collaboration that took root over the next year eventually created an adult secondary education course to increase students' grade levels to the point where they could enter an intensive, month-long biomanufacturing training program at a local community college. The interaction and cooperation between senior staff and executive directors of all three agencies would bear fruit in the near future, but there was just one problem. Despite industry expectations, there were very few biomanufacturing jobs opening up in late 2003, and the partnership soon disbanded.

A Giant Step Closer
At the same time, AACA and Alianza were among five Boston CBOs involved in a three-year workforce development capacity building initiative, which helped with strategic planning to strengthen their job training program infrastructure, increase the scale of its existing programs ,and build new ones. AACA executive director Chau-ming Lee said, "We had a good level of basic trust." Spring 2003 saw the release of a workforce partnership request for proposals by SkillWorks, a consortium of local foundations led by the Boston Foundation, with additional money from the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Two small planning grants, totaling $50,000 each, would be awarded to workforce partnerships that served specific industry sectors. With some powerful industry players, experienced automotive training providers and well-known agencies which served the Boston area Asian, Latino, and African-American communities, PACE was now on the front burner, making a powerful statement to funders.

From Planning to Implementation
From late 2003 to summer 2004, PACE partners developed the program. Each community-based partner took the lead in a specific area of expertise. AACA was responsible for the ESOL curriculum; Alianza handled case management, while Urban League took the lead for workplace etiquette/job readiness. Key employer partners, the two training providers, and the CBO executives and senior staff formed an advisory committee, which met once a month, while senior staff met weekly (and sometimes more often) to plan recruiting, outreach, assessment and intake. The three CBO executive directors also met separately in what Alianza's William Rodriguez often referred to as a "kitchen cabinet," which helped solidify the CBO partnership beyond the PACE project. "The conversations that Chauming, Darnell (Williams, the Urban League's president and CEO), and I were having got us into a more collaborative mindset instead of a competitive one. We were showing in practice what people talk about in theory. Our three communities were working together, but first we were able to show that we could work together ourselves." Williams agreed. "The dialogue got richer and deeper and more successful than if we had to do this alone."

In fall, 2004, PACE was notified that its proposal to implement the project would be funded for $1 million over the next three years. The project features 323 hours of training over a one-year period, two evenings a week and Saturdays. Automotive training totals 287 hours. There are 84 hours of ESOL and 12 – 24 hours of math for those who need it, nine hours of computer instruction, four hours of test preparation, and 32 hours of workplace etiquette, along with career coaching and financial counseling. The funders' goals for PACE are to produce "systems change" on many levels. One of these is helping students move beyond entry-level salaries to economic self-sufficiency. This effort has already started to pay off for the CBOs, according to Darnell Williams. "In spite of the challenges that CBOs face in the funding environment, we can work together to achieve a greater good, with three ethnic groups lifting up our communities. That's really huge for me."

Richard Goldberg is director of education for the Asian American Civic Association in Boston. He has been involved in PACE since the planning stage of the project in spring, 2003. He can be reached at: richard@aaca-boston.org