York Employment Training Center Celebrates 25-Years

The Crispus Attucks Center for Employment & Training celebrated its 25-year anniversary in the month of October 2011. The center provides education, training, and employment services to York City residents and its surrounding communities.

The center originated in 1986 as the Crispus Attucks Employment Center as a referral service designed to provide opportunities for minorities. Those minorities were defined as women and African-Americans. The reason for opening this center was to make sure it was easier for minorities to acquire mainstream jobs in York County.

The primary source of funding for the center is the United Way of York County. The center also receives funding from Harley Davidson, York Hospital, Drover’s Bank, Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff and the Wolf Organization.

The main reason for the job disparity for minorities was income levels. Poverty in the minority community also attributed to the job disparity, specifically within the City of York. The Crisupus Attucks Center for Employment & Training was born through the funding of the companies previously mentioned and the direction of Bobby Simpson.

The first few years of the organization was a success because the community was responding well to the job placement. As a recession hit in the early part of the 1990s, many placements were being fired because they were the last ones hired by their companies. This caused a sharp decline in the amount of workers the center was placing.

The center had to redefine what it was doing in 1993, which is when it changed its name to its current one, by realizing that the center had to provide its clients with better training and job preparation. There was a major lack of cultural awareness and sensitivity amongst employers of clients that the center was placing in jobs.

When the center first opened, it was focused solely on adults, but today the center has shifted to the youth and young adults in the area. They are counseling those from the age of 14-21 years old. The young adults of the United States currently account for roughly 26 percent of unemployed workers and that number is steadily rising.

The young adults are provided with social skill development, career development, classroom instruction and case management. All of these training programs are used to provide the young adults with a sketch of the real world and what they will need once they are in it.

The center will launch an initiative to teach older youth for employment in January of 2012. The program is called the W.A.V.E. program, which stands for Youth With a Vision of Employment, and it provides young adults with paid work experience across York County. For the first three months of employment, the young adults will be provided a wage, paid by the center. The reason for this new program will be to teach new skills, develop working relationships, define career objectives and hopefully push the young adults into full-time employment.