Commerce Seeks National Partner in New Regional Partnership Program

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Last month, the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced a Federal Funding Opportunity (FFO), seeking a national partner to help lead its new Accelerating Industry-Led Regional Partnerships for Talent Development program.

The Accelerating Industry-Lead Regional Partnerships for Talent Development will establish a learning exchange to identify, promote, and expand upon best practices for building local and regional job-driven industry partnerships. Along with the national partner, EDA will: convene and facilitate learning across regional partnerships with demonstrated success in addressing the skilled workforce needs of business and industry; identify the characteristics of successful industry-led partnerships and the barriers to success at the local and regional level; and develop best practice reports, learning tools, and case studies within and across regions to build, sustain, and scale existing and new regional partnerships. National partners will be responsible for:

• Developing selection criteria and administering a competitive selection process to identify participating regions
• Administering a learning exchange, including convening participating regions at a national level to learn about best practices, and visiting participating regions to facilitate development and adoption of best practices
• Devising ways to disseminate guidance on best practices to regions not participating in the learning exchange.

This effort incorporates elements of the Job-Driven Training Checklist, which was developed as part of the Administration’s Job-Driven Training Action Plan.

State, local, and tribal government entities, as well as institutions of higher education, and public or private non-profit associations are eligible to apply. Applications are due by January 9, 2015.

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