A minority workforce training program on Syracuse’s North Side is being expanded with the help of several local agencies.
Northside UP, a community group targeting the immigrant population in the northern sections of Syracuse, has been running training programs called Green Train and Health Train. The second has placed a few dozen people on the payroll on St. Joseph’s Hospital, also located on the North Side.
But Northside UP has been given a million dollars in grants and gifts to expand that program beyond the neighborhood. It will be called, simply, Work Train.
Northside UP founder Dominic Robinson says the process can be replicated and scaled easily.
"So while some of the particulars might change, based upon the employer need or based upon the context, the methodology that we’ve used and the way we reach out and build collaboration is what’s really being scaled up here," he said at a kickoff event at Loretto in Jamesville Wednesday.
To start, Robinson says much of the training program’s focus will still be on health care jobs, a major sector of Syracuse’s economy.
"If we can kind of embed them in the process, get them to play that discrete role to a larger end, then we can scale it as much as we can do that," Robinson said.
Loretto, a senior living facility, has pledged to hire 100 graduates from the program.
New York state is chipping in $100,000 dollars in a grant for the program.