WHITE HOUSE FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES NATIONAL SUMMIT
ON PRISONER RE-ENTRY

Each year more than 650,000 men and women are released from prison. Department of Justice studies of this population indicate that almost two-thirds of those individuals will return to prison within three years of release, many within the first few months. In 2004, President Bush announced his Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative (PRI) designed to assist ex-prisoners and the communities to which they return. Through this program, returning offenders are linked to faith-based and community institutions that help ex-prisoners find work and avoid a relapse into a life of criminal activity.

In response to a nation-wide call for papers from the US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, and USDOL, The Trident Workforce Investment Board submitted an abstract of the Charleston County Detention Center Welder Training Program.  This initiative was selected as a promising model prisoner re-entry training program. Paul Connerty (Trident Workforce Investment Board) and Christine DuRant (Charleston County Grants Administration) presented a White Paper on the program model to the White House Faith Based and Community Initiatives National Summit on Prisoner Re-entry in Los Angeles, California on November 27, 2007.

Click here to view the White Paper.

US Department of Labor

The Trident Area Welding Initiative:

Recognition of Excellence Honorable Mention Award, 2008

International Association of Workforce Professionals

Recognized for commitment to value-added public-private partnership programs

One Stop of the Year Award, 2004 & 2008

THE 2001 SOUTH CAROLINA OUTSTANDING ONE STOP
OF THE YEAR AWARD

The South Carolina Workforce Investment Board selected the Trident One-Stop Career Center System as the One Stop of the Year in 2001 for providing exemplary WIA services.  The Trident One-Stop Career Center System served several thousand satisfied customers providing core, extended core, intensive and training services under the Workforce Investment Act.  The award recognized our public-private partnerships with several regional employers to enhance workforce opportunities and develop a highly skilled and qualified workforce.

SELECTED IN 2002 AS A ONE-STOP INNOVATOR BY THE RUTGERS UNIVERSITY JOHN J. HELDRICH CENTER FOR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

The Heldrich Center staff visited one-stop career centers across every level of the workforce development system to find those centers that were innovators in workforce development.  The Trident One-Stop Career Center System was one of the centers selected for a site visit by the Heldrich Center research team in 2002.  They sought promising practices in the following categories - Services to Job Seekers – Services to Employers and One-Stop Design and Management.  The Trident One-Stop Career Center System was recognized for it’s outstanding and innovative service to employers.  The US Department of Labor published the Heldrich Center’s findings in One-Stop Innovations- Leading Change Under the WIA One-Stop System. (ETA Occasional Paper). Washington, DC:US Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, October 2002.

THE 2002 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
JOURNEY TO PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE AWARD

A partnership between the Trident One Stop Career Center System, Trident Technical College and Nucor Steel netted a first-place national award at the Journey to Performance Excellence 2002, a conference of the U. S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration.  Team members from the three organizations demonstrated how their partnership successfully met the workforce needs of Nucor Steel and provided job seekers self-sufficient wage opportunities. The team’s victory qualified the team to compete in the prestigious national competition at the 24^th Annual Spring Conference on Teams in the Workplace sponsored by the Association for Quality and Participation.

THE 2002 ASSOCIATION FOR QUALITY AND PARTICIPATION (AQP)
TEAM COMPETITION PROCESS

Not only is the Trident One-Stop Career Center System considered the benchmark for other career centers throughout the country, it represented, for the first time ever, the entire workforce system in the private-sector “Association for Quality and Participation (AQP)” quality award competition held in March 2002.  The National Team Excellence Awards are presented to teams, which most clearly and effectively demonstrate the principles and techniques of improving quality through participation.  The TOSCC partnered with Nucor Steel and Trident Technical College in the 2002 competition to demonstrate how public, private and government entities fulfilled workforce needs through unique and successful partnerships.  Although they did not win the competition, the team had a respectable showing as the first workforce development program to compete in this prestigious national competition.