This fact sheet by the National Skills Coalition provides a succinct overview of the challenges faced by low-skilled service workers and their employers due to a lack of foundational and key skills with regard to job knowledge. The fact sheet outlines potential options for employers to boost worker skills, including industry partnerships, apprenticeships, work-based learning programs, and integrated education training. It provides informative tables and charts to illustrate how investment in upskilling workers can pay off for employers.

This article from Social Solutions looks at how understanding the employer perspective is a key to successful engagement between workforce programs and employers. Employers rely on workforce development organizations to help them understand and navigate services and programs; successful engagement with employers involves doing not just talking and discussing but more action and results. The article outlines five steps for building collaborative business services, including: proactively targeting businesses for outreach, listening to employers regarding the challenges or issues they are facing, sharing information with staff and partner organizations, identifying challenges and opportunities and developing services to address them, and working with employers to provide solutions in a seamless manner.

This discussion paper from the Heritage Foundation examines how community institutions serve to build social capital within a community. Focus is given to charter schools, religious institutions, housing associations, and virtual networks as community institutions that promote social capital and foster a sense of opportunity within communities. Within these four types of institutions, numerous example programs are highlighted for their work in each area.

This working paper from the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty explores a variety of approaches to help move families out of poverty. One of the building blocks explored is community building and social capital (beginning on page 36). Relevant research is presented describing the importance and impact of social capital, and an overview of example programs is given. Additionally, the documented impact and funding for each example program is listed.

Based in Oakland, California, the Family Independence Initiative (FII) has focused on how low-income people have the capacity to construct their own pathways out of poverty. Recently after listening to families expressing their need to maintain and develop new connections across the country, the organization developed a community-building social networking Web site - UpTogether. The platform allows members to offer and ask for support to move their lives forward, reach goals, and improve their well-being leverage their initiative accelerates their mobility.

The New Haven Mental Health Outreach for MotherS (MOMS) Partnership™ is a collaboration of agencies across the city of New Haven, Connecticut that work together to support the well-being of mothers and families living in the city. This partnership created a social media application called “MoMba™,” which connects new mothers locally to promote healthy mother-infant interaction, social connectedness, and community engagement. New mothers may feel socially isolated after giving birth, thereby making it more difficult to form a healthy mother-infant bond with their baby. The application focuses on promotion of social support and capital, maternal-infant attachment, and skill building related to parenting. Representatives of the collaboration shared an overview on how this application harnesses technology to enhance social capital among low-income mothers at the September 2015 OFA Gateway to Opportunity convening.

This reference guide from the U.S. Department of Labor provides promising practices regarding specific nondiscrimination requirements in Section 188 and the current Section 188 regulations. It was developed as a resource document for any organization that desires to ensure universal access to and equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in the workforce development system. It is available for download from the web site.

This informational Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program video intends to assist grantees in establishing their own employer partnerships by highlighting established in-demand healthcare trainings used across 21 states to meet growing employer need. The video illustrates relationships between HPOG 2.0 grantees and their employer partners.

This report from the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and the American Public Human Services Association was commissioned to assess the financial health of community-based human services organizations and make these organizations stronger. The project was supported by a diverse advisory council, and the report details important findings as well as the challenges community-based organizations face as they operate. Finally, five initiatives are outlined that, when implemented, will greatly support the work of community-based organizations while enabling sustainability within the field.

This journal article from The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences outlines a plan for utilizing Head Start and career pathways services offered through a community college to create a two- generational human capital approach to serving low-income families. The article outlines policy and funding that would encourage this type of collaboration across anti-poverty programs. It highlights recent research that has shown that this model can work and produce positive outcomes as evidenced by a program in Tulsa, Oklahoma.