Thursday, December 13, 2007 

798-5800

Picente: County to Operate Training Programs

At Utica’s Gillmore Village, Other MHA Sites

Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente, Jr., today announced that Oneida County ’s Office of Workforce Development will be providing computer training, counseling and job placement services to residents of Gillmore Village and other Utica Municipal Housing Authority facilities.

“ County Government is working with our community partners to provide the people of Utica with the skills they need to find good jobs or win promotion into better-paying jobs,” Picente said. “Through our partnership with the Municipal Housing Authority, we can help adults and young people to increase their job skills and improve their job prospects. By working in tandem with the MHA to operate a Neighborhood Network Center at Gillmore Village , we are taking training programs to the site where the people who actually need it reside. Housing projects such as Gillmore Village are home to many who want to enter the workforce or move up in the workforce but lack essential technology skills. The Neighborhood Network Center is the perfect place for a no-pressure, no-cost learning experience that helps adults become fully trained to use the hardware and software they will encounter in an office setting.”

Picente noted that the Office of Workforce Development and MHA already operate a technology center at Adrean Terrace, and have developed a community technology center at Martin Luther King School . Picente said that the MHA has secured two federal grants that will support the Gilmore Village project:

• The ROSS Family Program will provide residents of the Gilmore Village Housing Project and other Utica MHA housing facilities with computer training, counseling and job placement services. 
• The Neighborhood Network Center Program will set up a computer center at the Gilmore Village Housing Project and provide a wide range of services for low-income children and adults.  Oneida County Workforce Development will operate the center and offer computer application skills training, basic skills, English as a Second Language programming, job search assistance, life skills training, and supportive services.

“I urge residents of the MHA properties that are served by these projects to use them to their fullest extent so that the County may assist in providing the type of training and placement assistance that will make the most use of the funding MHA has secured to help the people of Utica ,” Picente said.