On Monday, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker joined grant receivers, community members and high schoolers at Wilbur Cross High School to announce the second round of funding for the city’s Career Pathways Initiative.
The program allows high school students to receive individual instruction and training opportunities for careers outside of traditional college education programs. Organizations focused on development in programs such as automotive, bioscience, construction, green energy and healthcare all qualify to receive this funding.
Taylor Bartholmew is one student at Wilbur Cross High School who has already benefited from this program.
“I feel like this is something that opened doors,” Bartholmew said. “Opened their [students] mind on different ideas of what they could do.”
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He has completed the EMT program and is enrolled in the CNA program at Southern Connecticut State University.
The city awarded $1.4 million in grants to 13 programs in New Haven and each organization can receive up to $100,000.
Last March, New Haven kicked off the first round of the initiative allocating $1 million worth of federal funding to 10 organization serving the New Haven area. Five organizations are received funds for the second year in a row.
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"New Haven Public Schools is a great example of the work that’s being done," Elicker said. “If you look at the list of organizations that have been awarded this funding, you’ll see just the breadth of work that’s being done in all different sectors.”
Samantha Williams’ foundation, the Collaboration of Minority Women Professionals, is one of these organizations.
“We provide targeted resources and information to Black and minority men, women and children entrepreneurs,” she said. “What we did is design a program for entrepreneurship as a career.”
This round of funding is expected to serve over 800 students across the New Haven community.
“These new career pathways will provide our students with the skills and qualifications to enter sustainable and well-paying careers that have opportunity for advancement,” New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Madeline Negrón said.
