By Shannon Holmes
June 6, 2005

As part of the ongoing partnership between The U.S. Conference of Mayors' Workforce Development Council (WDC) and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), 30 workforce directors and staff from across the country met May 23 in Baltimore to participate in a successful day and a half forum.

The forum, Putting America To Work: Highlighting the Innovations of the Public Workforce System, was a "roll-up-the-sleeves" working session. The session addressed the unexplored nexus between AECF's investment in research and learning on promoting economic opportunity for low-income and low-skilled workers and WDC's collective and individual member activities with the same population.

The goal of the forum was to develop a set of solutions and identify best practices on career advancement for the working poor, out-of'school youth and literacy. To lead off the forum, researchers from each of the topic areas presented the latest research and best practices in the workforce system that correlated with each topic. The researchers were followed by two WDC members in each topic area highlighting their own best practice. Facilitated discussion in each topic area took the rest of the first day. On the second day, individual reports with concrete solutions were presented in each topic area. These were then refined to be included in a final report to the AECF Knowledge Workforce Conference in December.

Participating researchers included Gayle Hamilton, Senior Fellow for Low-Wage Workers and Working Communities at MDRC; Linda Harris, Senior Policy Analyst at Center for Law and Social Policy; and Margaret Doughty, Consultant for Literacy USA. Practitioners presenting were Ron Painter, Executive Director of the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board in Pittsburgh; Joe Carbone, President and COO of Workplace Inc. in Bridgeport; Ernest Dorsey, Project Director for the Youth Opportunity site in Baltimore; Laura Shubilla, President of the Philadelphia Youth Network; Clyde McQueen, President and CEO of the Full Employment Council, Inc. in Kansas City; and Conny Doty, Director of Jobs and Community Services for Boston.

A duplicative forum will be held in Denver July 17-19. For more information about the forum please contact Ida Mukendi at 202.293.7330 or imukendi@usmayors.org.