SitemapThe Youngstown Restoration & Opportunity Center, being created with a $400,000 American Rescue Plan appropriation from Councilman Julius Oliver will seek to help city residents who are unemployed or underemployed with focuses on health care and the culinary arts.
“It’s a city transforming program,” said Oliver, D-1st Ward. “I’ve been working on this for five years. It exposes youth and adults to opportunities and careers. You get put into a program at no cost to you to go beyond livable jobs and be trained for family-sustaining jobs.”
A $30,000 allocation from Oliver’s $2 million ARP ward fund provided money for a study done by the Manchester Bidwell Corp., with the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation serving as fiscal agent. The study was done by Joanna Papada, Manchester Bidwell’s vice president of external affairs. Manchester Bidwell has worked with more than 20 communities in the United States as well as one each in Israel and Puerto Rico. When Oliver was in Israel, he visited the facility in Akko. Papada said while Youngstown’s unemployment rate is 6.3%, its “functional unemployment,” meaning those who are also underemployed, is 27% and is about 40% for black residents.
“It’s time for us to look at what can be done to reverse that trend,” she said.
The study of the proposed center, called YoROC, states it “aims to prepare adult learners to enter and excel in health care and the culinary arts. This center will be a non-profit organization.” The initiative will work with Choffin Career & Technical Center and Bon Secours Mercy Health and will provide free licensed programs for up to 30 students per program per year, according to Papada’s study.
“This initiative posits that the residents themselves should be considered Youngstown’s primary assets and deserve to be the city’s top priority by all institutions,” the report states.
Once established as a licensed educational provider by the Ohio State Board of Career Colleges and Schools, YoROC’s programs will be co-designed with regional employers to confer a legitimate academic credential and professional certification to each student in one year or less, according to the report. The goal would be to have 70% to 85% of enrolled adults complete the training and then 75% to 85% of those who graduate to find proper employment, Papada said. The program will “address issues of structural unemployment in Youngstown,” said Bonnie Deutsch Burdman, Youngstown Area Jewish Federation’s executive director of community relations / government affairs. “YoROC will work with several area entities. Julius has been the one with the vision and people want to make that vision come true.”
The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. will be the fiscal agent in seeking a location for the program.
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