Our workforce development efforts this year have had four goals:

• To make involvement in workforce development more visible and attractive to ABE programs, and make partnering with ABE programs more appealing to employers and workforce development organizations;
• To develop tools, curricula, information, resources, training and relationships that will increase ABE programs' capacity to prepare students for jobs or better jobs;
• To educate ABE programs and directors about workforce development, working with employers, and working with the official workforce development system; and
• To educate the workforce development system, employers, and organizations involved in workforce development, about ABE programs and the benefits of partnering with them.

In FY2005, SABES and its new team of workforce development coordinators have:

• Educated ourselves about workforce development, learned the system and its politics.
• Initiated successful and well-attended joint meetings between One Stop Career Centers and ABE Directors in each SABES region.
• Generated momentum and interest in ongoing communication and collaboration between these organizations.
• Generated ideas and plans for collaborations including expediting access to Career Center services for ABE students and graduates.
• Met with local WIBs and SDAs to publicize SABES and the role of ABE, promote collaboration, and elicit issues, concerns, and questions.
• Participated in statewide and local conferences and trainings for ABE and WFD staff.
• Negotiated a high-profile SABES role at a statewide workforce development conference.
• Made SABES visible as a "player" and partner in workforce development to the community, the WFD system, employers, and CBOs.
• Formed a new 30-member statewide SABES workforce development advisory committee.
• Educated ABE directors and other staff about ways to prepare students for employment, develop relationships with employers and business associations, and identify potential funding sources for workforce development/ABE partnerships.
• Publicized existing and emerging funding sources for ABE/WFD partnerships to ABE programs.
• Collected anecdotes, narratives, promising practices, case studies of ABE/WFD integration.
• Initiated a new workforce development page on the SABES web site, with info and events.
• Explored and evaluated employability credentialing tools and discussed statewide uses.

In addition, the Workforce Development Coordinators have truly bonded as a team and learned from each other, taken on new roles and responsibilities, and developed a division of labor drawing on our respective strengths, skills and expertise, and the specific needs of each SABES region. And, in our ongoing discussions within the Regional Support Centers and CRC, we have conducted ongoing presentations and discussions to educate our peers in SABES about workforce development and its relationship with ABE.

Some issues and questions that have emerged include:

• Effectively building relationships.
  • Need for follow-up, but insufficient time or staffing.
  • Program needs and requests for ongoing support, TA and facilitation.
  • Prioritization of what relationships to pursue once initiated.
• Clarifying the scope of our work with WIBs through a "WFD/Career Center Sharing Group".
• Need to focus on internal education, development, growth: team-building.
• Collaboration and relationships with community planning/community partnerships.
• Need to understand statewide system issues, collaborations/tensions "at the top".
• Integrating WFD into SABES professional development and TA.
• Avoiding perception of favoritism if SABES WFD Coordinators work with one program or OSCC and not another?but we need to pilot with smaller group, expand later.
• Limits on how many new partnerships we can help develop, given limited new funding. What is the likely future funding picture for ABE/WFD collaborations and career ladder programs at the state level? How can we help bolster/promote this?

Some of our recommendations for the future include:

• The need for a teachers' study circle that experiments with implementing contextualized curriculum and building bridges to students' employment needs and economic literacy needs by researching what's out there, trying it out in classrooms/ programs and then publishing their results. Reinstate this kind of in-depth, critical practice within SABES.
• Building and maintaining relationships with other WFD agencies and institutions such as the Boston PIC, CommCorp advisories, other statewide bodies. In particular, making sure that we sit on advisory committees and sustain ongoing meetings and projects.
• Supporting ABE programs (and SABES) to call on and utilize other funding streams such as WFD/DOL/private sector, etc.
• Supporting programs to work with employers and trade associations, promote new partnerships and collaborations.
• Developing study circles for SABES staff on WFD, and on the impact of the global economy and the "new economy" on immigration, jobs, employment patterns, employer skill requirements, and students' skill needs, in the context of ABE programs, curricula, and classroom practice.
• Focusing more on work with immigrants and developing new programs and partnerships addressing their employment and basic skill needs.
• Clarifying the scope of our work with WIBs through a "WFD/Career Center Sharing Group".
• Collaborating with community planning partnerships.
• Piloting programs to provide integrated services and give more LEP clients access to jobs through Career Centers.
• Needing to strengthen, highlight, and integrate the perspective, and demonstrate the value and expertise, of ABE educators in policy discussions, program development and design, WFD/ABE partnerships, and advocacy initiatives.