Community Assistance Center opens Empowerment Center

Neighborhood Assistance Center Initiative Director Doris Pereira Greater Perimeter Chamber Executive Director Adam Forrand CAC Executive Director Francis Horton Rep Lucy McBath Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul and Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Vice President Karen Leone de Nie cut the ribbon opening the Empowerment Center Photo by Bob Pepalis The Area Assistance Center brought its career and adult tuition services together with the grand opening of its Empowerment Center on Nov Executive Director Francis K Horton III declared the Empowerment Center was the first project completed in its million three-year Compassion in Action capital campaign CTJ Construction completed renovations of the second floor of the CAC s building at Hightower Trail in Sandy Springs Holder Construction donated all the furniture for the Empowerment Center Horton revealed that in the CAC looked at numbers and results and saw that percent of the people who came to them for help worked at least one job They needed to upskill they needed to reskill so they can move their families toward stability Horton announced That resulted in the idea to take CAC s career services the elements that help people plug into their careers and adult mentoring services and put them together Horton mentioned that the choice to combine them should better enable clients to move their families to a stable state I m so incredibly proud of the work CAC continues to do in an area that s near and dear not just to my heart but to my head because I know you are lifting people out of poverty Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch disclosed Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch declared she was proud of the work that the CAC does to lift people out of poverty Photo by Bob Pepalis Lifting parents out of poverty also uplifts their children towards a brighter future and an easier path than their parents Deutsch reported Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul noted if CAC didn t exist they d have to invent it The great thing about CAC is you take our community materials and you leverage them and you make them grow and you expand them You make them go so much further than we could do it ourselves in affair we did have to invent CAC so I want to thank you for doing that Paul noted Rep Lucy McBath who returned from Washington D C after the U S House of Representatives voted on a spending bill to reopen the federal ruling body mentioned she sees the value of population private partnerships Places like this new Empowerment Center represent what is doable when nonprofit partners and administration leaders come together to address a very urgent need in our district McBath reported McBath sits on the Instruction and Workforce Committee for Workforce Improvement She announced she s focused her efforts on the reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act WIOA She s the sponsor of the TRAIN Training Retention and Financing Now for a Better America Act which would permanently authorize funding for population colleges through WIOA Karen Leone de Nie a vice president with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta joined the celebration She declared under its monetary framework mandate the Atlanta Fed s role is to sponsorship maximum employment by improving economic opportunities for low and moderate-income individuals and underserved communities We provide research tools and we help build networks of leaders like yourself working to advance economic opportunity for households with lower incomes Leone de Nie reported The CAC s capital campaign illustrates how to align capital to solve these problems Well-positioned communities with aligned capital can remove walls to career pathways and that can help households become self-sufficient Leone de Nie stated Participants partners and other supporters heard how the CAC Empowerment Center will be used to help clients Photo by Bob Pepalis The labor territory is the relationship between employers and the people seeking work Leone de Nie mentioned However it isn t a simple matching event Connectors like the CAC are needed to bridge the gap between employers and prospective employees she stated Research by the Atlanta Fed with the National Skills Coalition revealed that percent of Georgia jobs across all industries require digital skills Leone de Nie commented but only one-third of workers possess the foundational digital skills to be productive Employers who provide upskilling opportunities can save tens of thousands of dollars in turnover costs per employee Leone de Nie disclosed research shows that workers gaining a single digital skill can see a percent wage increase Programs like CAC s Empowerment Center can help bridge the gap she mentioned The post Neighborhood Assistance Center opens Empowerment Center appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta