SEATTLE- The Boeing Company recently awarded SkillUp Washington $85,000 to support capacity building efforts and sustain career pathway initiatives in the Puget Sound region.
Career pathway strategies combine training, education and support services to help low income working adults find a family-sustaining career or advance in their current industry. SkillUp uses this approach in much of its work, such as creating opportunities for people in the health care sector and helping young adults ages 18-30 to improve their basic skills and enroll in credit-bearing
Initial research by SkillUp’s Investors Group estimates that there about 92,000 people in King County between the ages of 18 and 54 have no postsecondary credential and are living households with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level. About 55,000 of these are age 25 and older and failed to connect with college when they left high school, about 44,000 with a diploma or GED and 11,000 without either. There are some 37,000 younger adults age 18-24, the vast majority of whom are not in college (about 8,500 of this group failed to gain a high school diploma or GED).
The importance of at least one year’s worth of postsecondary study and a credential to the earnings potential and advancement opportunity of low-income individuals has been well established by research here in Washington State and at the national level. SkillUp’s goal is to pull under-prepared individuals into training and education pathways that work for them – to get more of them to and through postsecondary education and beyond even as they continue to work to support themselves and their families.
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