Recently, Skyline College’s Center for Workforce Development (CWD) was awarded an additional $150,000 from The Bay Area Workforce Funding Collaborative for its Goodwill Industries, San Mateo, San Marin, and San Francisco partnership—a collaborative offering of BUS 669, Domestic Warehousing and Logistics. The collaboration between Skyline College and Goodwill Industries is touted as a model Community College Career Collaboration (C4) partnership—an effort which aligns each organizations’ missions and efforts to advance credentials and employment success for underserved and low income populations. Students who enroll in this ten-week program receive four units of college credit, attend an all-day orientation at Skyline College, receive an OSHA 10 and Forklifting Certification, participate in skill-building workshops, and get hands-on, work-based learning experience at Goodwill Industries warehousing facilities in San Francisco and Burlingame. Currently, the Business Division offers four BUS 669 cohorts per year.
The success of this program has garnered attention and funding at the local and national level. Skyline College’s Domestic Warehousing and Logistics/Goodwill Industries project continues to solidify its infrastructure with a newly created Domestic Warehousing and Logistics Certificate and a revamped Business Advisory Committee. Last year, the Center for Workforce Development received a Social Innovation Fund for its work with Goodwill Industries and will use the additional round of funding to develop a Career Advancement Academy for this sector. Most recently, the CWD presented the project and its findings to the Rockefeller and Annie Casey Foundation, who are participating in youth innovation projects nationwide. With continued interest in the project and increasing momentum, the CWD team looks forward to continuing this work and growing the innovative program.
Article by Alina Varona | Photo by Alpha Lewis
