Workforce Innovations

Business Resources

CONNECT! Alumni Awards Event Honors Outstanding Individuals and Organizations

Eight alumni of CONNECT! one-stop programs and four supportive community partners were honored at a celebratory breakfast event on Oct. 6, 2006, at the Santa Clara Marriott. Community partners recognized were: Hunter Technology, Macy's West, Pathways Home Health, Hospice & Private Duty, and NOVA Workforce Board Member Susan LaForge.

Beharwa Fisaha, a participant in NOVA's Youth Employment Program, was recognized for being selected as one of this year's Kumin Scholars. The eight CONNECT! program alumni honored were: Sonia Arancibia, Lisa Marie Gord, Arletta Jorgenson, Nancy Lawton, Craig Morales, Carol Picchi, William Torres, and Diana Villalobos, representing a total of seven CONNECT! partner organizations.

Keynote speaker was Dr. Robert W. Fuller, author of All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (Berrett-Koehler, 2006). Scott McGrew, business and technology reporter with NBC11 News, served as emcee.

For photos of the event: www.novaworks.org/whats_new/06.alumni.connect.event.html

PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and the Future, October 2006
The Public Policy Institute of California's survey of Californians revealed several pre-election findings. Here are two of them: 1) Likely voters continue to name immigration (21%) and education (19%) as the issues they most want the candidates for governor to discuss, followed by the state budget and taxes (10%), and jobs and the economy (7%). 2) A majority of likely voters (59%) favors redistricting reform that would require an independent commission of citizens, not the governor and legislature, to adopt a new redistricting plan after each Census. Go to: http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=718.

EPI Policy Memorandum: China manipulates its currency–A response is needed
According to L. Josh Bivens and Robert E. Scott, authors of EPI Policy Memorandum #116, "The U.S. Treasury Department's most recent assessment of foreign trading partners' exchange rate policies refused to state that China was manipulating the value of its currency to enhance its international competitiveness. However, a serious reading of all evidence on the matter clearly shows that China has exceeded all well-established limits that have been used to determine currency manipulation in the past." To learn more, go to http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/pm116.

NOVA’s Workforce Review
The Workforce Review is a two-page fact sheet featuring data on labor force trends, including regional unemployment rate and change, specific labor force data for NOVA’s consortium of cities, and workforce reductions in the NOVA area.