ALICEVILLE, Ala. (WBRC) – While the struggle continues to fill many of the job openings that are currently available in Alabama, some business leaders support a plan that would further tap into one resource pool that could provide workers ready to earn a better living.
West Alabama Works recently announced an additional $150,000 grant with Just Trust. That money will be used to help lobby elected leaders to ensure people released from the prison systems are better prepared to find jobs.
That will help with a separate $6.5 million grant that West Alabama Works will use at the Federal Women’s Prison in Aliceville.
Ingraham State Community College, the prison college for Alabama, partnered with them to offer job training for those inmates. Training would happen while they’re incarcarated and after they’re released.
Simulators would also be placed inside the prison to help certify those inmates.
Earlier this year, industry leaders at a West Alabama Workforce Development Summit discussed how they would connect inmates with jobs after they finish the program.
“The ladies there will actually be trained on soft skills, essential skills, work-ready skills, also technical skills so that they can be certified with The jobs that we have. Then we will place them in jobs, not only here in Alabama, but many of these ladies will be going back to Tennessee, to Georgia, to Mississippi,” said Donny Jones, executive director of West Alabama Works. “And so, we’re partnering with all of those states to create opportunities for them all across the southeastern part of the United States.”
They’re already in the process of posting jobs and growing staff for the job training program at the Aliceville federal prison.
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