Building Opportunity: A 21 st Century Workforce for Southern Illinois is the title of the summary report of a year-long Community Audit of Workforce Investment Area 25 (Franklin, Jackson, Jefferson, Perry, & Williamson counties). The study was done during 2003-2004 under the direction of the Southern Illinois Workforce Investment Board (SIWIB). Conducted by noted researchers Dr. Richard Judy and Dr. Jane Lommel of Workforce Associates in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Community Audit included many focus group meetings, summits, and interviews conducted with stakeholders throughout the five county region.
Community Audit Update
Below is a link to a summary of Community Audit taskforce activity to date. This summary will be updated periodically. Additional links are provided to access the final recommendations put forward by the Business Services Taskforce subcommittees.
The completed Community Audit provides us with:
- A tool for community leaders — to help them better understand business and labor force trends and develop strategies to address worker and business needs
- A snapshot of where we've been, where we are now, and
- A starting point and a roadmap, showing us some of the routes we need to take to get us to the destination we seek — a better future for southern Illinois.
The Community Audit identified ten key challenges facing us as we seek to build a better future for southern Illinois. The challenges are laid out in detail in the Executive Summary booklet, but in simplified terms, those challenges are to:
- Develop a regional economic development strategy
- Reduce student dropout rate
- Improve student learning outcomes
- Combat brain drain
- Prepare today's workforce for tomorrow's jobs
- Support lifelong learning
- Encourage a business driven workforce and economic development system
- Kindle southern Illinois' entrepreneurial spark
- Focus on healthcare and educational services
- Promote local labor market information
Some of the identified challenges are inter-related; thus we have combined them into four distinct strategy groups, as follows:
- Develop a regional economic development strategy
- Develop an regional educational services strategy
- Develop a regional business services strategy
- Develop a regional healthcare services strategy
For each of these strategy groups we seek to recruit Champions, who will then assemble and lead a team of "experts" who have expertise and interest in the field. This team of experts will work together to study the issues relating to their area of responsibility and formulate a regional strategy designed to address them.
At or near the one-year anniversary of the Community Audit rollout, each Champion's strategy group is requested to submit a final report to the SIWIB proposing a strategic plan to address the challenges they have studied. The proposals will then be presented by the SIWIB to the Chief Local Elected Officials (CLEOs) in our five county area for study and/or implementation.
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