Project Overview
Third Sector worked with the City of Boston’s Office of Workforce Development, Community Advocates for Young Learners (CAYL) Institute, the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, training partners, and workforce boards to build and strengthen sector partnerships in the field of early care and education. This effort helped to identify collaborators to recruit, train, and place teachers in the Greater Boston area to scale up the pipeline to careers in early childhood education. This initiative is one of two projects awarded to Third Sector through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Good Jobs Challenge.
Most of us believe that children (ages 0-5 years) should have a safe and nurturing space to learn and thrive with qualified and supported educators, no matter their race, background, or circumstance. However, many cities and states fail to invest meaningfully in early childhood education, leaving educators underfunded, underpaid, and underresourced. For decades, the field of child care has been largely populated with women, more specifically Black Women and women of color, who are often undervalued as working professionals. As a result, these positions are often highly underpaid and provide little to no coordinated pathways for advancement.
Recognizing the growing need for jobs in a wide array of fields, including early childhood, and the importance of incentivizing and supporting economic innovation that can lead to thriving new industries and "good jobs" that pay Americans a living wage, the federal government appropriated in 2021 $500 million to the U.S. Department of Commerce to administer the Good Jobs Challenge. The department awarded funds to 32 employer-led sector workforce training partnerships to invest in innovative approaches to workforce development. The City of Boston's Office of Workforce Development (OWD), one of the Challenge grantees, proposed the Greater Boston Good Jobs Challenge to build and strengthen three sector partnerships: health care, clean energy, and child care. This is the only project focused on the child care sector awarded through the Challenge.
In October 2022, Third Sector joined a Good Jobs Challenge collaborative with the City of Boston's Office of Workforce Development (OWD) to provide technical assistance and strategic guidance in developing and standing up employer-led and worker-centered sector partnerships. The sector collaboration was driven by the Community Advocates for Young Learners (CAYL) Institute and the Department of Early Education and Care with additional partner support from MassHire's workforce boards and career centers; local community colleges; training and wraparound support providers; and more than 100 child care employers and family child care entrepreneurs.
The Greater Boston Early Care and Education Good Jobs partnership recruited individuals to receive workforce training and the credentials required for hiring and/or upskilling at no cost to the participant. The partnership's explicit goal was to increase access to training and reach pay parity for Women of Color. The partnership focused on training new and current educators in center-based and family child care programs and supporting participants who want to become family child care entrepreneurs and start their own child care programs.
Third Sector supported CAYL in orchestrating the sector partnership, serving as a thought partner in designing the training program, and providing project management throughout the initiative's implementation. Third Sector completed its work with CAYL in March 2024, and the Good Jobs project will continue through August 2025.
The Greater Boston Early Care and Education Good Jobs partnership aims to train and employ 850 individuals by the end of August 2025 in either child care centers or in family child care. Third Sector provided technical assistance to CAYL in setting up processes for successful sector partnership implementation. For example, Third Sector supported CAYL through project management and capacity building within the organization. Third Sector also supported CAYL in building robust data collection and analysis and continuous improvement practices to track progress toward outcomes goals.
Workforce Pathways
| Project Name | Scope | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utilizing Sector Partnerships to Strengthen Workforce Systems and Provide Good Jobs in Rural Central Texas | County | TX | Active |
| Third Sector is working with Workforce Solutions Rural Capital Area, Workforce Network, Inc., Smithville Workforce Training Center, training partners, and employers to build and strengthen sector partnerships in the skilled trades, health care, finance, and IT sectors. This effort will recruit, train, and place working people in seven rural counties in central Texas into quality jobs. This initiative is one of two Third Sector projects awarded funding through the U.S. Department of Commerce's Good Jobs Challenge. | |||
| Better Careers Design Group: Using Human-Centered Design to Advance Equitable Economic Outcomes in California | County | CA | Closed |
| The Better Careers Design Group was a multi-year initiative across four California counties that brought together government agencies, nonprofits, and local community members to design human-centered and outcomes-oriented solutions for systemic workforce challenges and to advance the equitable economic outcomes in California. Third Sector led the group of 20 participating organizations through each phase of the human-centered design process so that local teams could apply lessons learned to engaging members of their local community. | |||
