The city will award grants totaling $12 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money to six businesses or organizations to help train workers for jobs in health care, manufacturing, information technology, youth employment and child care over the next three years.
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird announced the grants Thursday. Along with loans to small businesses, the program represents about half of the $46 million the city received from the federal stimulus plan that sent $350 billion to states and local governments to help them address the economic impact of the pandemic.
“Ensuring workers have access to rewarding and financially secure careers that enable them to provide for themselves and their families is a top priority,†she said. “Ensuring businesses and organizations can secure the workforce they need to be successful and grow our local economy is an equally important priority.â€
Lancaster County received $62 million and city and county officials worked together to decide how to use the money to avoid duplicating recovery efforts.
Contracts on the grants are still being finalized but they include:
* More than $1 million to Bryan Health to train 125 participants a year as certified nurse assistants and phlebotomists.
* Nearly $600,000 to the Center for People in Need to train 40 students a year in the Google Career Certificate Program.
* About $1 million to Community Action, which serves 493 children in its Head Start programs, to provide child development associate credential training to 30 participants a year.
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* About $2 million to Lincoln Manufacturing Council to provide classes for two types of manufacturing certification. One certification class will be offered to 225 participants over three years and the second certification class to 200 participants.
* About $2 million to Rabble Mill, a Nebraska-based nonprofit providing alternative youth programming, to create a youth-focused workforce development program at The Bay. The money also will pay for building improvements to support the new program.
* About $4.5 million to Southeast Community College for a new STEM center to provide training in information technology, manufacturing and welding and to develop an innovative approach to rapid retraining of the community’s workforce.
The announcement comes on the one-year anniversary of passage of the American Rescue Plan Act.
Nearly $7 million of that money has gone to support more than 250 small businesses and more than 2,800 employees most disproportionately affected by the pandemic, especially microbusinesses, Gaylor Baird said. Of the grants, which helped pay rent or mortgage costs, 42% were microbusinesses.
County and city stimulus funds also have gone to bolster public health efforts, offered grants to 30 nonprofits and will be used to enhance rural water service, and rural broadband development.
Gaylor Baird said workforce development was identified as a key need by an economic recovery task force she convened in the early days of the pandemic, and it’s a need the city feels even more acutely today.
The grants were among 19 applications received and reviewed by a committee that included co-chairs of the task force.
Whenever possible, training participants will be co-enrolled with Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act programs for other services, including job placement, making the stimulus funds more effective, Gaylor Baird said.