Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative - Community Foundation National Capital Region

LEADERSHIP

For more than 30 years, The Community Foundation and our donors have demonstrated a deep commitment to our diverse communities.

Going forward, working together we can bring positive change to the most difficult issues facing our region today.

The Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative

An initiative of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, the Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative (GWWDC) is a coalition of thirteen local foundations and public partners who share a common belief: workforce development can enhance the economic competitiveness of the greater Washington, DC region by ensuring that employers’ workforce needs are met and, at the same time, provide pathways to shared prosperity for the region’s families by providing workers with opportunities to enhance their employment, skills, and earnings.

Background
The founding members of the GWWDC began meeting in fall 2006 as the Workforce Development Learning Group. This diverse group included 11 foundation representatives who came together to learn more about trends, best practices, and effective approaches to investing in workforce development. Through a series of learning sessions, this group explored national trends in workforce development, workforce intermediaries, sector based work, policy issues and capacity-building as well as programs targeted to low-skilled adults and youth. The group learned about successful workforce development investments in other jurisdictions and discussed how these models might be replicated for the DC region.

In October 2007, the group formalized its partnership with support from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and officially launched the Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative. The collaborative made initial plans to work together for three years, with the first year focused on learning and program development and the following years focused on grantmaking and other activities.

Structure
The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region serves at the lead institution for the collaborative. GWWDC is organized into a steering committee and working groups. The steering committee is comprised of contributing funders who oversee grantmaking and strategic direction. Current members include the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, the Consumer Health Foundation, the District of Columbia Department of Employment Services, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Fannie Mae, the Herb Block Foundation, the Jovid Foundation, the Northern Virginia Health Foundation, the Moriah Fund, and the Washington Area Women's Foundation.

Goals and Strategies
GWWDC aims to help low-income, low-skilled adults throughout the Greater Washington region obtain and retain jobs that provide good wages, benefits, and opportunities for advancement by:

-- Expanding access to education, training, and work supports

-- Engaging employers

-- Enhancing the quality and capacity of existing workforce development programs

-- Improving alignment and coordination across programs and systems, and

-- Increasing policymakers’ awareness of and responsiveness to key workforce issues facing the Greater Washington region

The Collaborative is currently engaged in a year of information gathering and program development. Beginning in fall 2008, GWWDC will begin investing in two broad categories of activity:

-- Policy and systems change efforts that strengthen regional policies, enhance funding streams, develop or grow institutions, and build seamless linkages between public, private, and nonprofit programs

-- Piloting sector initiatives, beginning with projects focused on the construction and health care industries

For More Information
Sarah Oldmixon
GWWDC Program Director
(202) 973-2519
soldmixon@cfncr.org