This initiative brings career-connected learning opportunities to students where they are, utilizing existing proven programs. This project also connected students completing the course to workforce resources and industry-specific training, leveraging the regional Workforce Investment Board’s newly designed Next Generation Workforce Solutions which targets girls, low-income youth, and youth of color. Through this project, INW worked with SUN coordinators and counselors to recruit the most at-risk high school students from all several East Metro school districts. Impact NW’s Pathways to Manufacturing (PTM) seeks to better serve youth from marginalized communities to develop their confidence, and hard and soft skills to enter into the local manufacturing trades. In doing so, students at Reynolds Learning Academy are offered experiential learning opportunities designed to build industry-specific hard skills, earning them paid internships and job placements with our manufacturing partners. Our goal is to expose, train, prepare and inspire underserved students at Reynolds Learning Academy to successfully enter Portland’s manufacturing sector with the skills, knowledge, and efficacy to remain successfully employed. As such, interested Reynolds students gain access to guest speakers from within the local manufacturing sector, work-based learning opportunities (workplace site visits, job shadows), mock interviews, site visits to post-secondary institutions, industry-specific training and credentials, as well as ongoing opportunities for networking and support, including access to our jobs portal and search website for viable manufacturing job and career opportunities.

Career Explorations offers afterschool programming through Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) to educate and expose high school youth to careers in these sectors, connect relevant high school coursework to the region’s workforce needs, and initiate the transition from school to career, while Sector Pathways focus is on out-of-school youth.

The specific objective of this grant is to extend the PTM program to an additional high school and serve 15 additional students at Reynolds Learning Academy during the 2019-2020 school year. The PTM program consists of 30 hours of manufacturing career exposure, 40 hours of job readiness activities, 160 hours of summer internships, 2 manufacturing site visits, and a manufacturing career event (Makers Gone Pro).

32 students participated in the cohorts of Career Explorations and an expected 15 additional students will participate in the Pathways to Manufacturing Program.

Updates from Pathways to Manufacturing