Rumford, Maine 04276 ~ info@growrumford.com

Jobs training could create jobs and businesses in the River Valley

The jobs training industry is a substantial industry in America. In Rumford and the River Valley, one source of new jobs may be the kind of jobs that teach people how to do other jobs.

The area has, already, the Region 9 School of Applied Technology, a $2 million dollar a year public training center on Rt. 2 in Mexico.  Students from three area high schools are sent to learn a variety of trades, from construction to metal working.  An Adult Education section of the school provides job training from training Certified Nurses Assistants to truck driving.  The School has about 20 people on the payroll in various teaching and administrative positions and is currently is embarked on a $4.9 million expansion in order to accomodate auto trades and other additional programs.

Now, the state is bringing in another jobs effort, a pilot program to teach the most elementary of job skills.  The Maine Department of Labor, under its Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board, has offered a 60-hour "Work Ready" program to teach those who have trouble conforming to the basic rules of the workplace how to do so.  The classes, according to the Work Ready web site, teach such basic skills as coming to work on time, coming to work on a regular basis, working as part of a team, and managing conflict.  Region 9 and Work Ready are supported by tax dollars, but there may be an opportunity for private job training as well.  Many communities have privately-run hairdressing/cosmetology schools, a trade not covered in the Region 9 curriculum.  Many other para-professional trades involve initial training.  See the box for suggestions of training programs that might be initiated privately, or even under a public school program, in this area. For more information about WorkReady, contact Nancy Allen, at Region 9, at 364-2012, or Baumer, at 753-9026.

Non-profit would assist people in coming up with handmade product and marketing it; sees each participant making an additional $10k per year as a result.

A Rumford native, now a Roxbury resident, announced May 27 the formation of a non-profit organization which could eventually, he says, create more than $3 million in new entrepreneurial activity in the area while boosting the income of low wage families.  The non-profit, called "The Good Fisher" is seeking funding to set up a school-like center in which low wage workers would be trained to take a craft from the hobby stage to a living wage.  Mark Henry, the executive director of the new organization, sees the project as a "bottom-up" economic development project which will succeed where "top-down" efforts have failed.  If Henry finds the $360,000 a year he says is needed for the program, it will be sited in a building with classrooms, metal working shops, wood working shops, sewing equipment and a retail store.  Participants will be coached in creating a saleable product and then helped in marketing what they create.  Each participant would be in classes and training at the Good Fisher for a year, then have four years' support in keeping their new business afloat.  "Using this approach, at the end of the fifth year of operation, the Good Fisher will have graduated 200 entrepreneurs generating $3.4 million dollars of new income to the region," he claims. For  more information, contact Mark Henry at 207-332-3995, or mark@markhenryenterprises.com

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The Region 9 School of Applied Technology in Mexico