11 Jun Happy Birthday, Charlotte Works!
It’s difficult to believe we launched the new Charlotte Works brand only one year ago! In the past year, we’re on track to have hosted over 60,000 visits to our two centers and our 30 SNAP sites. A year ago, when I was at meetings, I had to spend a great deal of time educating everyone I met about who we were and what we do. Now, only one year later, I’m amazed at how our reputation has spread across our community. Much of our success can be attributed to two factors. First, our volunteers instruct our workshops, run our job teams and provide much-needed career advice to job-seekers. Without these amazing individuals, our ability to complete our mission would be severely limited. In fact, their in-kind gift of their time and talents have saved taxpayers over $200,000 in direct training costs.
The past year has also seen many new faces join the Charlotte Works team. When we launched this transformation initiative, we had to build our entire team from scratch, and I’m so proud of the group of dedicated individuals we’ve assembled. Their passion and compassion for the thousands of job-seekers facing a still difficult job market make me proud and humbled to be their leader. We still have much work ahead of us in the coming year. New programs and tools will be rolled out at a time when fewer government resources are available. This means we must look for new ways to better serve our clients, including examining how your workforce system statewide can better serve our regional economies and in more efficient ways.
Charlotte Works staff and volunteers look forward to an even more successful second year and thank the entire Charlotte community for your ongoing support.