COPS/Metro, Central TX Interfaith, TMO, DAI and Valley Interfaith leaders move mountains in the midst of a global pandemic to protect the most vulnerable. 

• COPS/Metro Leverages $75M for Workforce Development in San Antonio
• Central TX Interfaith Wins $36M in Austin Rental Aid That Includes Immigrants
• TMO-Ft.Bend Leaders Leverage $26.5M in Rental, Food & Utility Relief in Ft. Bend
• COPS/Metro Leverages $25 Million in Local Housing Aid that Includes Immigrants
• TMO Leverages $23 Million in Rental Relief in the City of Houston 
• TMO Wins $30 Million Harris County Pandemic Relief Fund for Houston Residents
• DAI Leverages $13.7 Million in Housing Aid, Pushes For More
• DAI Wins $10 Million Housing & Small Business Aid from Dallas County
• Central TX Interfaith Leverages $10M in Housing Support from Travis County
• Valley Interfaith leverages $7.5M in local relief
• TMO leaders in Beaumont win $1.2M for local rental assistance    

[Excerpt]

Last week, the New York Times highlighted a workforce training program in San Antonio called Project QUEST that helps hundreds of people every year move out of poverty and into sustainable employment. A recent analysis of the program was particularly encouraging. Nine years after entering training, participants are still experiencing high rates of employment and earning over $5,000 more annually than a similar group that didn’t participate in the program. Such outcomes are rare in workforce development programs.

The Times article came out just as AEI’s Vocation, Career, and Work research team began discussions with Capital IDEA in Austin, Texas, an organization that uses a model similar to Project QUEST. Capital IDEA has been working with low-income families in Austin for more than 20 years to move workers from low-wage to middle-skill jobs. In 2018, program graduates earned an average starting wage of $22 per hour. A previous analysis of the program has found sustained wage gains at least four years after program completion.

[Photo Credit: RealClear Policy]

Note: Capital IDEA is a long-term workforce development program established by Austin Interfaith.  Project QUEST was established by COPS/Metro in San Antonio.

In Austin, a Public/Private Partnership for Workforce Success, RealClear Policy 

[Excerpt]

The economic odds facing Avigail Rodriguez a few years ago couldn’t have been much worse. An undocumented immigrant and a single mother, she lived in a cramped apartment in a tough neighborhood in San Antonio and earned just $9 an hour working as a nurse’s assistant.

Today, Ms. Rodriguez, 26, owns her own home in a safer area, earns nearly three times as much as she did before and has secured legal residency. The key to her turnaround was a training program called Project Quest, whose own ability to beat the odds is no less striking than that of Ms. Rodriguez.Project Quest has succeeded where many similar retraining efforts have failed, taking workers lacking in skills and successfully positioning them for jobs where they can earn double or triple what they did previously.

“This really gives employers a chance to find workers they wouldn’t otherwise have considered,” said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University. “At the same time, it provides opportunities to a rather disadvantaged group of workers, both younger and older.”

....

Project Quest was born 27 years ago in a Hispanic neighborhood in San Antonio where poverty rates are above the citywide average. After the closing of a Levi Strauss factory there, community groups [COPS/Metro] created Project Quest as a way of preparing workers for better-paying, more highly skilled jobs that were less vulnerable but still in demand.

[Photo Credit: Joanna Kulesza, New York Times]

Job Training Can Save Lives. See How San Antonio Does It., New York Times [pdf]

Note: Originally established by COPS/Metro in San Antonio, Project Quest is one of several IAF workforce development projects supported by the Texas ACE Fund.

At the Texas IAF Statewide Legislative Strategy meeting, held in Austin, 200 leaders from nine Texas IAF organizations convened to build relationships, report on 2018 progress and prepare for the 2019 legislative session.  Ernesto Cortes Jr., IAF National Co-Director, delivered a 'state of the economy' training before leaders broke out into smaller groups for workshops around school finance and property taxes, workforce development, and healthcare affordability. 

Workshops were led by panels of IAF organizers and local policy experts, including: Josh Sanderson and Dr. Ray Freeman, Deputy Directors of the Equity Center; Michelle Smith, Director of Governmental Relations, and Libby Cohen of Raise Your Hand Texas; Neil Vickers, Executive VP of Finance and Administration at Austin Community College; and Anne Dunkelberg, Associate Director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP).  

In April, leaders plan to call on state legislators to invest more state funding in public schools, long-term job training programs and into healthcare affordability, in addition addressing local reforms around immigration, criminal justice and payday lending reform.

In a move to boost voter turnout in neglected communities, Texas IAF organizations reached into suburbs surrounding Texas’ largest cities to assemble by the thousands in political, nonpartisan assemblies to help leaders wrest commitments from candidates for state and federal office. Having witnessed candidate responses to locally-developed agendas, which span from local control to Texas school finance and federal immigration reform, leaders are now mobilizing their neighbors to Get Out The Vote.

In North Dallas, for example, two thousand DAI leaders -- many from Carrollton and Farmers Branch -- invited candidates for House Districts 114, 115, 105 and 107, and Congressional District 32, to commit to investing public funds in local labor market intermediaries, crafting immigration reform that would end the separation of children from their parents at the border (and include protections for DACA youth), cracking down on predatory lending, and repealing Senate Bill 4. Hundreds more from Austin and Hayes County challenged candidates for US Congressional Districts 25 and 21, and State House Districts 47, 45 and 136 to publicly pledge support for similar priorities, including the defense of local control over municipal housing and labor policy. In Helotes, just outside of San Antonio, COPS / Metro leaders carted out boxes with thousands of postcard pledges by voters to participate in the election of US Representative for Congressional District 23, which extends to the outskirts of El Paso, and State Representative for House Districts 117 and 118. In Houston, TMO organized assemblies with candidates for US Congressional District 7 and 29; House Districts 144, 133, and 135; and Senate District 17.

Already, unpaid armies of organizational leaders have knocked on thousands of doors and called thousands more to remind supporters and voters to participate in the midterm elections. Last weekend, for example, Austin Interfaith leaders knocked on doors in three counties, four legislative districts and 2 congressional districts. This weekend, all Texas IAF organizations are making a final push -- from the pews, inside health clinics and in long-neglected neighborhoods -- to ensure the highest turnout possible in support of their agenda.

Leaders understand that targeted voter engagement efforts following accountability assemblies help advance their agenda. This year alone, local Texas IAF organizations succeeded in raising municipal wage floors in San Antonio and Austin to $15 per hour; leveraging the support of Chief of Police Art Acevedo to make Houston the first city in Texas to support a gun safety strategy; and preventing unnecessary deportations through widespread adoption of identification cards generated by parishes within the Catholic Diocese of Dallas.

Texas’ Minority GOP Voters: Republican Allies Have Vanished, McClatchy

Activist Groups COPS and Metro Alliance Spreading Message to the Suburbs, WOAI

Austin Interfaith Hosts Large Gathering of 2018 Midterms Election Candidates, KVUE

Candidates Share Platform at Assembly, Austin American Statesman

Why Dallas Republicans Skipped an Interfaith Forum, Rewire.News

To Help Immigrants Feel Safer Around Police, Some Churches Start Issuing IDs, NPR

DAI Accountability Forum [Video]

[Excerpts below]

Since 2014, Texas has paid nonprofits across the state to help nearly 800 poor, older students navigate their way through community college….

The programs face uncertain futures because they are funded using a budgeting tactic known as a special item. Those items are used to pay for specific programs at universities by sending the schools that host them money outside the normal higher education funding formulas…..

Next year, that kind of help could end, though not because lawmakers are unhappy with the program. If the Senate gets its way in ongoing state budget negotiations, the Legislature would overhaul the way it pays for higher education in Texas — and funding for the Texas Innovative Adult Career Education Grant Program could disappear.

“It has nothing to do with our program or the effectiveness of it,” said Elizabeth Valdez, lead organizer for The Metropolitan Organization in Houston, which is advocating for lawmakers to continue funding the grant….

[Photo Credit: Gabe Hernandez, Texas Tribune]

Commentary: Funds Help Adult Career Program Boost Workforce, Families, Austin American Statesman

State Should Continue Funding ACE Job Training, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]

Proposed Higher Education Funding Overhaul Could Come With Collateral Damage, Texas Tribune

Senate Resolution, Senate of the State of Texas

Texas Job Program Shows Unusually Strong, Lasting Gains, Study Finds, Austin American Statesman [pdf]

Study Affirms Project QUEST Achievements, San Antonio Express-News

Escalating Gains: Project QUEST’S Sectoral Strategy Pays Off, Economic Mobility

Texas Innovative Adult Career Education (ACE) Grant Program: The Wise Investment for Proven Economic Development, Texas IAF

Over 200 leaders from organizations of the Network of Texas IAF convened at the Texas state capital to call on state legislators to restore full funding for the Texas Innovative Adult Career Education Fund (ACE Fund).  The delegation met with 20 legislators and staff asking them to support the ACE fund at its full $5 million and oppose anti-immigrant legislation.  Leaders additionally asked for local control covering issues as wide ranging as affordable housing and bail reform.

Texas IAF leaders additionally invited as guests of the legislature, as a resolution was read in support of the ACE fund by five Texas House members.  Later that day the Senate also read a resolution in support of the ACE fund.

At a press conference organized by the Texas IAF, legislators from across the state emerged from the Capitol to speak in support of the ACE fund.  Capital IDEA graduates from Houston and Texas, in addition to graduates from other IAF Labor market intermediaries told stories of how the workforce initiatives changed their lives, moving them from $10.00/hr part time work to careers earning as much as $70,000 per year!  The average wage of a graduate from these programs is $20.66/hr.

At a statewide convening of the Network of Texas IAF Organizations, leaders developed an agenda of issues to tackle in the upcoming legislative session.  The top two issues will be immigration (stopping anti-immigrant legislation) and the ACE Fund (promoting full funding for investments in long-term workforce development).  Several organizations plan on additionally tackling local control as it impacts local rental housing, property tax and bail reforms.