Central Georgia Technical College is a two-year public college and a Predominantly Black Institution in central Georgia. Through this grant, the CGTCF—a nonprofit organization that supports the college’s mission and students—will engage young people participating in the CGTC REACH program, which is a student organization established to promote the success of underserved populations, primarily young men of color, in postsecondary education and the workplace. The CGTCF will work with small to mid-size employer partners in high-growth industries in the region that have expressed an interest in and commitment to diversity and inclusion. These employers—the City of Milledgeville, Spherion Staffing and Recruiting, and Georgia Artisan Furnishings—have also committed to supporting REACH student representatives in job shadowing and other immersive workplace learning activities.  

GSCUL works to help African Americans and others in underserved communities achieve social parity, economic self-reliance, power, and civil rights. GSCUL will engage a diverse and committed group of employer partners—Aultman Health Foundation, Akron-Canton Airport, and Kenan Advantage Group—who aim to be role models for peer employers who want to improve their work environments. Once the Action Roundtable project is complete, GSCUL plans to leverage existing infrastructure provided through the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce to share the lessons learned from these roundtables and investigate how the recommendations might be able to influence employers throughout the region.

KYD is the intermediary organization for the out-of-school time sector in southwest Michigan. For this project, KYD will partner with the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Services Agency (KRESA), an intermediate school district providing career exploration programming to K-12+ students as well as internships, apprenticeships, and other work-based learning experiences for young people and adult job seekers. Both KYD and KRESA have begun to implement the Critical Youth Development framework to engage youth, young adults, and adults in the process of understanding their racialized identities, creating belonging in multi-racial contexts, and strengthening agency to dismantle oppressive systems to realize a more equitable future. KYD and KRESA will bring a similar approach to this work with their employer partners: Landscape Forms and Duncan Aviation. 

TPP is a hybrid educational and workforce development organization working to promote high educational aspirations among urban youth, fund scholarships for postsecondary access, and fuel a prepared and diverse regional workforce. Since 2008, the organization has awarded more than $150 million in postsecondary scholarships to more than 10,000 students. For this Project, TPP will partner with UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., and Thermo Fisher Scientific—three large employer partners who have already made an investment of $1 million or more in The Promise scholarship fund, providing postsecondary scholarships; internships; and, in some cases, full-time careers to students.

TCCC works to build collective power to transform education by changing systems that allow Black and brown children to achieve their goals. As a regional intermediary organization, TCCC aligns community resources, removes barriers, and promotes collaborative efforts to build a regional culture where everyone has access to the supports and resources they need to obtain a high quality education, secure a good job, and live a quality life. TCCC’s theory of action ensures all work in the community, including their work on the Action Roundtable project, is informed by the voices of those who are the most affected by programs, systems, policies and/or practices.  As a close partner of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, TCCC will work with the technology solutions firm, eGroup, and other employer partners involved with the Chamber’s Career Academy program.