40. Community Need The Miami Valley Urban League’s mission is to transform generations through financial empowerment and self-sufficiency. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Black workers nationally are twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts. That number for Black workers in Ohio is closer to the three times as likely. In combination with what is now being called the Great Mismatch, where job growth hasn’t caught up to job seekers, there remains to a segment of the population who are unemployed or underemployed because of barriers that prevent them from either qualifying for positions or being able to afford to care for their families while working, the “hidden worker”.

Through our SOAR program we work with people to remove the barriers and gain stable employment. Participants enrolled in the 2-week work readiness training program are instructed by the SOAR Coordinator, Job Developer, and Financial Coach. The curriculum includes goal setting, financial coaching, resume development, effective communication, critical thinking, and problem solving, mock interviews, job search, and professionalism in the workplace from the MVUL staff and volunteers. To ensure participants’ success beyond our training, we continue to support them in their journey to eliminate barriers that prevent sustaining stable employment through job and life skills coaching for a year after they complete our training. In working with SOAR participants, barriers can include lack of access to training, particularly in advanced technologies; automated application systems that exclude them; and companies’ failure to more broadly target hiring efforts to include them. Through partnerships with local businesses and organizations, we provide leads for training, employment and supportive services. To ensure our participants achieve stability for their families, we are working with local educational institutions and employers to develop pathways that increase participants ability to continually advance in their career. Using the local labor market statistics these pathways are stackable, so that they are realistic and achievable for SOAR program participants, and provide a pathway from entry-level employment to a sustainable career that helps to provide for their families.

MVUL's Career Pathways focus is the Healthcare, Advanced Manufacturing, Automotive, and Technology industries. We are in discussions about creating trainings and pathways with other industries that are in-development right now.