Giving Compass' Take:

• This article dives deep into how community organizations like the Jane Addams Resource Corp in Chicago connect people with the technical and soft skills needed to land and grow in, good, 21st-century manufacturing jobs.

• How can donors help drive organizations and programs that aim to help people learn about the tech industry? How can funders work to make the opportunity these jobs present known? 

• Learn how wind farms are bringing middle-class jobs to poor areas. 

On a sunny Tuesday morning in August, a yellow school bus arrived at a squat, red-brick building in northwest suburban Schaumburg. Five men stepped out, one by one, and walked into the offices of the Technology & Manufacturing Association.

The men were trainees with West Side Forward, a nonprofit trying to revitalize the West Side of Chicago. The group, based in the city’s Austin neighborhood, buses trainees to Schaumburg at least once a week to receive manufacturing training and instruction.

“They treat me real great — they taught me everything,” said Marcus Wallace, 36. “I didn’t know none of this before, until I came here. They made me use my brain.”

Before he enrolled in the work readiness program and started classes at the Technology & Manufacturing Association (TMA), Wallace said he was “on the streets, being a nobody.”

At TMA, a trainer works with Wallace and others from the West Side group to finish their final projects, a block of metal carved with a star on one side and the Chicago Blackhawks logo on the other. Completing the project earns the trainees a National Institute for Metalworking Skills certificate — a credential that they can take to any metalworking employer in the United States.

Read the full article about closing the skills gap by Esther Yoon-Ji Kang at LISC.