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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

TX Model Transforms Low-Income Students Into Skilled Professionals

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Monday, February 6, 2023   

For more than two decades, a workforce development program in El Paso has invested in the economically disadvantaged to help them attain the education and job skills needed to earn higher wages.

Project ARRIBA - Advanced Retraining and Redevelopment Initiative in Border Areas - connects residents of low-income neighborhoods with resources that can prepare them for higher education and job training.

President and CEO Roman Ortiz says ARRIBA promotes living-wage jobs that will help residents stay in the El Paso area.

"In order to be able to get a good career, you're going to need post-secondary success," said Ortiz, "either at the community college level, or higher, in order to be able to get into better-paying jobs."

In December, the El Paso County commissioners awarded Project ARRIBA a 20-month contract worth $1 million in American Rescue Plan funds. Ortiz said he expects to see about a 30% increase in overall growth, allowing ARRIBA to serve twice as many new participants.

Ortiz said the program - which has a 94% job-placement rate - typically guides participants into health-care, information-technology and other professional careers.

"We're only going to train for jobs that we know that in El Paso are going to be in demand and pay a family-sustaining living wage," said Ortiz. "Our goal is $14 an hour with benefits and a career path - but on average, we're job-placing people close to $58,000 a year."

In El Paso, about one out of every two women lives below the poverty line established by the federal government, according to Ortiz.

He said that makes ARRIBA's success stories very encouraging - including one about a participant who received financial assistance to graduate with a nursing degree.

"She is the cardiovascular nurse manager for our top-tier university medical center here in El Paso," said Ortiz, "who manages almost 100 nurses herself and hires our nurses that we graduate today."

He said ARRIBA, which spends about $6,500 per participant, has helped some 1,800 graduate, and another 1,600 with job placement.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.




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