Team Vance, partners launch job-training project


“All the pieces started to fall into place quickly.” “We want to work with you.” “We need to be proactive rather than reactive.” “You know when something really clicks.” “We can have a tremendous impact very quickly.”

Those were but a few of the sentiments expressed by Bill Edwards, developer Eddie Ferguson, local Employment Security Commission head Sara Wester and college official Garland Elliott at a news conference Tuesday morning at Vance-Granville Community College to introduce “A Collaborative Initiative to Train an Employable Workforce.”

The program is a collaboration of the Employment Security Commission and Vance JobLink Career Center, the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce, the Kerr-Tar Workforce Development Board, Team Vance, and the college.

The initiative is a career readiness program in which the successful participants will add a credential to their resumes. Applicants who earn the Bronze level will be prepared for 30 percent of jobs and will have achieved core workplace skills. There are thousands of jobs in the Bronze category. The Silver level will prepare you for 65 percent of careers, and the Gold category puts you in the 85 percent bracket.

The initiative is a move to develop an inventory of the work force in Vance County and make Vance workers more marketable to future employers.

In an effort to address problems in the community and make Vance a better place to live, Team Vance has agreed to spend $25,000 on the initiative, enough to cover the costs for 250 people. The effort is directed at just Vance residents for now, but the hope is to broaden the initiative to make it regional.

The money will pay for the WorkKeys assessment and the KeyTrain development program for the participants, as well as KARTS transportation to the college for those who need it, Team Vance member Ferguson said.

The program initially targets the people left unemployed by the closures of Custom Molders, Com-Fo Hosiery and Winn-Dixie, Wester said. Notices were sent to 150 of those workers. If not enough people from those three companies sign up, the initiative will try to reach others.

Edwards, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, announced that soon there may be a need for 500 to 600 employees at a facility that is planning to expand in the county. The hope is that Vance’s unemployed will be the first to sign on.

In a news release, Vance-Granville President Randy Parker also linked the initiative to the planned multicounty hub.

“All parties involved with this initiative believe that we must do this in order to have an available work force for higher technical jobs that will come with the development of our hub sites,” Parker said. “We want these jobs to be offered to a Vance County work force and not a work force that has been imported.”

When future employers ask what Vance’s labor force looks like, economic development recruiters could say that the county has profiled 500 workers at the Gold level.