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T'ville to be pilot city for WIRED Grant program
The grant is one of 13 grants totaling $195 million issued around the nation as part of the Labor Department's new WIRED- Workforce Innovation through Regional and Economic Development- initiative. Alabama Southern Community College, along with seven other community colleges in western Alabama and eastern Mississippi, has been awarded a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to serve 17 counties in western Alabama and 19 counties in eastern Mississippi. "I want to say how proud I am that Thomasville was selected as the first city (to implement the grant)," said John A. Johnson, president of ASCC. "Everyone in the WIRED region knows about Thomasville and your energy." "Thomasville is known statewide," said former State Sen. Gerald Dial, who now serves as executive director of the state's Rural Alabama Action Commission. "I'm going to use Thomasville as a model as I travel around the state and talk about what you can do with a committed leadership." Nicole D'Andrea, coordina- tor of the grant project for ASCC, said the purpose of the grant was to get city's "enterprise ready," to help entrepreneurs in creating new businesses and new jobs. In presentation to attendees, D'Andrea cited studies that showed cities that support entrepreneurs fair better than similar cities that don't. One statistic that stood out in the presentation is that wages in areas that support entrepreneurs are 14 percent higher than in similar areas that don't. "Competition is no longer regional, but global," she said. One success story cited was Valley County, Nebraska, where a push to support entrepreneurs and enterprise has resulted in $120 million in new growth in the past six months. The population of the county is close to that of Thomasville alone. Attendees then broke out into groups to discuss the positive things already happening in Thomasville and what they'd like to see in the future. Transportation improvements, growth in the arts and cultural activities, better employment opportunities were among the concerns listed. Another meeting will be held within 60 days to continue working on the project. In a recent press release on the WIRED grant, the Secretary of Labor had this to say. "We are launching the WIRED initiative to encourage regional communities to partner together and leverage their collective public and private sector assets and resources to develop a more highly skilled workforce that can act as the linchpin to attract new economic development and employers," said Elaine L. Chao. Chao said the aim behind the grants is to persuade local communities to begin thinking on a larger scale and work together in blocks of communities, making it easier to draw new business.
"We are empowering communities to create regional economic growth and improvements in human capital," said Chao. "We are encouraging communities to think and act regionally. We want these grant areas to build a new vision for their economic futures."
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