Washington, DC: The National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) will honor three local Workforce Boards with its prestigious Theodore E. Small Workforce Partnership Award at its annual Forum on March 7th in Washington, DC.

The Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board will be honored as the Grand Prize Winner and the Brevard Workforce Development Board, Inc. and Workforce Solutions Northeast Texas will be honored as Distinguished Honorees. The award represents the highest recognition of workforce investment boards around the nation that take the lead in engaging Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs), business, economic development, education, labor, and other entities toward the goal of ensuring a highly skilled workforce.

2010 Grand Prize Winner: Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board
Partnership Initiative: Developing Employee Skills through Industry Partnerships

Since 2002, the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board has convened an array of regional incumbent worker training partnerships, which now include Centers of Excellence in Production Agriculture, Long-Term Care Practice, Renewable Energy, and Packaging Operations and Manufacturing, as well as a Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program in Construction and the Industrial Maintenance Training Center of PA.

Centers of Excellence are implemented in partnership with Lancaster Prospers, an economic development collaborative consisting of the Lancaster Chamber, the Economic Development Company, the Lancaster County Planning Commission, Cooperative Extension, and the Lancaster County Conservation District. Many of these partnerships are regional and include up to ten additional workforce investment areas and together they engage over 450 companies in this network of industry-led incumbent worker training investments.

These partnerships have connected with the One-Stop system in Lancaster County and around the region through a robust program of pre-employment training directed to the career paths needed for key industries in the regional economy. Partnerships have also sponsored and supported youth programming related to career information and experience. Recently, stimulus funding has allowed the programs to connect to dislocated workers in a more intentional way.