>> Hello everyone. Welcome to the community of practice for inclusive career pathways. Today's event, Building Employment Opportunity Through Inclusive Career Pathways, is brought to you by WINTAC, LEAD and DEI. Before we get started, let's review some housekeeping for today's presentation. Listening to the webinar. The audio for today's webinar is being broadcast through your computer. Please make sure your speakers are turned on or your headphones are plugged in. You can control the audio broadcast via the audio broadcast panel. If you accidentally control the panel, you can reopen by going to the communicate menu at the top of the screen and choosing join audio broadcast. If you do not have sound capabilities on your computer or prefer to listen by phone, please dial 1-415-655-0001. The meeting code is 667524938. You do not need to enter an attendee ID number. Captioning. Real-time captioning is provided during this webinar. The captions can be found in the media viewer panel which appears in the lower right corner of the webinar platform. If you do not see the captions, you may need to open media viewer panel by selecting the media viewer button in the upper right corner of the webinar platform. If you want to make the media viewer panel larger, you can minimize other panels like chat, Q&A and/or participants. For submitting questions for the Q&A portion, please use the Q&A panel to send your questions during the webinar and we will direct the question accordingly during the Q&A portion. If you are listening by phone and not logged into the webinar, you may also ask questions by emailing them to Shannon Edam at sedam@ndi-inc.org. Please note, this webinar is being recorded and the materials will be placed on the National Disability Institute website at www.realeconomic impact.org. If you experience any technical difficulties during the webinar, please use the chat box to send a message to NDI Admin, or you may also email Shannon Edam at sedam.ndi-inc.org. Our first speaker in today's presentation is Nikki Powis, training and technical assistant manager at WINTAC. Welcome , Nikki, and thank you.

>> Hi. Thanks, Shannon. Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us today. As Shannon mentioned, this webinar is brought to you by the Community of Practice for Inclusive Career Pathways Through the Workforce Innovation Technical Assistance Center, or WINTAC, the LEAD Center, and the Disability Employment Initiative, or DEI Technical Assistance Center. The Community of Practice supports and shares ideas and insights across all partners working together to increase career opportunities for individuals with disabilities through a career pathways framework. If you're not already a member of the Community of Practice, we'd love to have you join us. And you can join online by visiting www.WINTAC.org. And just click on the COP, or Community of Practice, link at the top of the page. You can also let us know in the Q&A and give us your email and let us know that you would like to join. And we will be sending further information about joining the Community of Practice as well out to all the registrants of today's webinar, so you can continue to join us. I will introduce you now to our technical assistance team. The team comprises of Rebecca Salon, who is the project director for the National Center on Leadership for Employment and Advancement of People With Disabilities, or LEAD. Brian Ingram, with the technical assistance on the Disability Employment Initiative, and myself, Nikki Powis. And as Shannon said, I am a technical assistance provider for both WINTAC and DEI. I'm now going to turn it over to Rebecca Salon just to give you a brief synopsis of how to connect with each of the technical assistance centers that are part of the Community of Practice Facilitation and Technical Assistance Team. So, Rebecca, do you want to tell us a little bit about the LEAD Center one this slide there?

>> Yes. Thanks so much, Nikki. We just wanted to make sure that you knew how to connect with the resources of the LEAD Center. As Nikki said, we focus on employment and economic advancement. We're providing you with the website address, which is LeadCenter.org. On our website you'll find sections on workforce and WIOA from a disability perspective, customized employment, financial literacy and capability and cross-system collaboration. So there's a lot of resources that you can find on the site. You'll also find a link to the DRIVE website. DRIVE stands for Data and Resources to Inspire a Vision of Employment. The DRIVE site has a wealth of information on what's happening in every state in the country, including the WIOA state plans profile of what is in your state plan from a disability perspective and lots of data on what's happening in disability employment. So we encourage you to go to the website if you're not on our mailing list so that you can learn about new resources that come out. You'll be able to sign up through the website. We have a presence on social media and we want you to have the contact information for a lot of the people who are working on different projects within LEAD Center. So that if you would like to follow up with any of us after the Community Practice meeting or at any other time, we'd be happy to speak with you. Thanks, Nikki.

>> Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Rebecca. And now I'll just give a brief overview of WINTAC. And so WINTAC's actually funded through the Rehabilitation Services Administration. And WINTAC is the technical assistance center that supports state vocational rehabilitation agencies and their partners in effectively implementing the requirements of W IOA. We invite you to visit our website, and you can see it up there, at www.WINTAC.org. And you'll find a wealth of information and resources in addition to the forum in place where you can interact with us and with your colleagues around the country houses on this site is the Community of Practice forum area. And as I mentioned before, we're welcoming new members at any time. If you are a vocational rehabilitation agency and you're not yet working with us and you would like to connect with us for some technical assistance or simply to ask questions regarding your WIOA implementation, then you'll also find on that website a list of the technical assistance liaisons assigned to each state. Each state has their own technical assistance liaison, so you can connect with that person. WINTAC is also on social media, and you have the links there. And also the link to contact the state liaisons. So I'm going to turn it over to Brian to tell us a little bit about how to connect with DEI.

>> Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. Happy to be here. Nikki, thank you. And my name is Brian Ingram. I work with the DEI Project at NDI. And since 2010, the US Department of Labor has awarded disability employment initiative grants to 55 projects in 30 states to expand the capacity of America's job centers to improve education, training and employment outcomes for people with disabilities through a career pathways framework and in support of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. So the DEI is administered by the US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration and jointly funded with the Office of Disability and Employment Policy. And what we have listed on our slide here is the workforce GPS DEI collection. So we actually have a page on workforce at GPS. And the links are provided here, including frontline resources and best practice highlights from the DEI Projects across the country. We also have a Disability and Employment community on the Workforce GPS, and it's pretty easy to join. And the links are provided here. So we're really happy to be with you today providing this training. And I'd like to hand it back to Nikki. Thanks, Nikki.

>> Yeah, thanks, Brian. So today we're really lucky to have representatives from two federal agencies: the Employment and Training Administration and the Rehab Services Administration, in addition to a national leader in increasing opportunities for individuals with disabilities. So I am going to introduce our panel here in just a moment. But we do have a really full agenda and we want to be able to get your questions and comments. But we know we may run out of time, so I just want to mention that if you use that Q&A, if you can ask your question and then put your email address next to it, then we will be sure -- and any questions we don't get to today, we're going to connect back with you via email and answer those at a later time. So we really do want to be responsive to your questions. So the next slide shows our lovely panel of presenters here. And first of all, we have Sara Hastings, who is unit chief with USDOL Employment and Training Administration. We have Felipe Lulli, who is with the Rehab Services Administration, and he's the project officer for several discretionary grant programs, including the Career Pathways for Individuals with Disabilities Demonstration Project. And I'm sure known to many of you on the line today, Dr. Joe Ashley, who's the assistant commissioner for Grants and Special Programs for the Virginia Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services. So thank you to all the presenters today for joining us. And I'm sure they're going to have a lot of wonderful information to share and you may have a lot of questions. So we're going to go into the objectives. Just very briefly let you know our objectives for today and to share some information that hopefully are going to leave you with a deeper understanding of career pathways within WIOA's vision for workforce development an equal opportunities, knowledge about federal and state collaborations and resources to include the Career Pathways Toolkit, some insight into how Virginia is leveraging resources and building across partner career pathway systems, and then get some questions answered to share your own successes and challenges with us through this forum. So now I'm going to go actually -- if we can move the slide on. We've got career pathways, a framework for WIOA implementation. And I'm going to turn it over to Sara Hastings with the Employment and Training Administration. Thanks, Sara.

>> Nikki. And hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. Thanks to Nikki and WINTAC and the whole planning team for inviting me. I work on career pathways quite a bit and have been since we started talking about it a lot more fully across the federal government in 2011. I helped cochair the interagency working group on career pathways. So we get to talk about career pathways all of the time. And so anytime anybody invites me to come and speak about career pathways, I'm happy to do it. And so I'm really glad to be here today. And so just I'm going to give us sort of a broader framework. We like to talk about career pathways as a framework for WIOA implementation. And just to set the stage a little bit, you know, we think of career pathways, you know, it is a key component of WIOA's promise of economic opportunity and economic growth for individuals across the country. And you know, career pathways can really be an efficient, very customer-centered approach to training and education. And it connects the necessary adult ed, the occupational training, postsecondary education, career and academic advising, in support of services for students to prepare them for and attain and progress along a career pathway. And the reason why we're talking about it with you all today is because WIOA requires, along with all of the core partners, that state VR agencies is a member of the State Workforce Development Board and the core program, as I said, in the One stop system to participate in the development and implementation of a state career pathway strategy that's initiated by the State Workforce Development Board. And I'm going to talk a little bit about roles. And so that, you know, that is why we're here today. There are lots of benefits for ensuring that the State Workforce Development Board brings together all of the core programs to think about this. One way to think about career pathways for the state and for individuals with disabilities is through kind of two sets of facts. First, if you talk to employers, they will tell you that they have difficulties in filling jobs due to lack of skilled workers. And an example of that in manufacturing. That the National Science and Technology Council projects that 2 million of the 3.5 million new jobs over the next 10 years may go unfilled because of the skill gap. So we have a big skill gap. The second piece is the labor force participation gap. And so according to BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a October 2017 jobs report, the percentage of working age individuals with disabilities participating in the US labor force is 33%. And that's compared to 76% for those without disabilities. So that's a gap of over 40%. So it's really important that we think about and strategize how best to bring everyone into career pathway systems. And you know, these career pathway programs can aim to narrow both that skills and that labor force participation gap by enabling individuals with disabilities to acquire these marketable skills and industry recognized credentials and to secure competitive, integrated employment in high demand and high quality occupations. So let's see if we can go back a slide here. So here is the career pathways definition in the law. And I'm going to kind of go through the definition, then I'm going to talk about where you can find career pathways mentioned throughout the law. But the first place is in the definition. You can see career pathways is a combination of rigorous and high quality education, training, and other services that -- and then it goes into seven components. And I think all of them are really important to be thinking about. Because on their own, a lot of these are just education and training programming. When you combine all of them, that's where we get the really thoughtful, comprehensive career pathway strategy. So it's aligning with the skills needs of industries that prepares individuals to be successful and in a full range of secondary, postsecondary education options. This includes apprenticeships, since we're talking a lot about apprenticeship these days. It includes counseling, which is incredibly important. Because folks need help thinking through and along that educational and career goal. Next slide. It also includes the education offered concurrently with and in the same context as workforce preparation activities and training for specific occupation or occupational cluster. This is where you see learning math skills, for example, while being trained in construction. This is when it happens together. This is a really key component of a career pathway strategy. It organizes education, training, and other services to meet particular needs of an individual. So this is really about an individualized approach to service education training and service delivery. It enables an individual to attain a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent. So this isn't just for folks who are already being successful in postsecondary education. The pathway starts with folks who still need to get that secondary diploma or equivalency. And the importance of thinking about recognized postsecondary credentials as well. And helps an individual enter or advance within a specific occupation. So this is the definition -- I think you've probably seen this before, but it's really important to reiterate that the combination of all of these things is really what makes it a career pathway. So next slide. So I'll talk a little bit about where you see within specifically within title I of the law where we talk about system alignment, the state provisions and local provisions. Here you can see, this is the function of the state board. It says in the law, the state board shall assist the governor in the development and continuous improvement of the workforce development system in the state. And this includes the development of strategies to support the use of career pathways for the purpose of providing individuals, including low-skilled adults, youth, and individuals with barriers to employment, including individuals with disabilities, with workforce investment activities, education, and support services. So you can see here it's clearly articulated in the law, the state has that role. Next slide please. Also, as part of the state's role, the state has to -- and you guys may have been involved in this -- develop a state plan. We are right now looking at the modified two-year modifications of the state plan. In the information collection request, it very clearly articulates that we -- that the federal agencies overseeing these approvals of these plans want to see -- and this is included in that information question report -- how states are developing and implementing career pathway strategies. And you can see it's clearly articulated here. Next slide. And then similar to the local board, very clearly the role of the local board here says that the career pathways -- the local board, with representatives of secondary and postsecondary education programs, shall lead efforts in the local area to develop and implement career pathways. So very clearly again, it's articulated on the local board role. And the next slide. And I'm trying to move quickly because I know all the good stuff's coming with Joe and Felipe, so I want to quickly get to them. The local board here also is part of the local plan -- we talked about the state plan. The local plan also is required, and this is laid out in the law, a description of how the local board working with its partners will facilitate the development of career pathways and co-enrollment as appropriate. So it's articulated in this section of the law as well. Next slide. And here is what I love to talk about. Which folks know, we have kind of the career pathway systems, we hear system development and we also hear career pathways programs. The way we like to think about is, we have six key elements of career pathways. And that really gets at the system-building, the system development, that's needed in order to then develop programs to then support participants. So first you need to have in place all of the cross-agency partnerships. You need to identify your industry sectors and your employers. You need to -- and then you can see here kind of in a green box, the third to the right if you're going clockwise, design education and training programs. That is the program development piece of the broader six key elements. That's where the articulation of programming begins. But all of these pieces, including identifying funding, aligning policies and programs, measuring system change in performance, that needs to happen at a very high level, strategic level, so that there's lots of conversation happening in order to then be able to have programs that do work across the core programs and your partner programs. So the system-building is a huge big piece of the work. It's not just developing the program and talking with employers and getting the counselors in place. But it really is thinking more systematically. And Joe will be able to give you a very good example of what that looks like in Virginia. So next slide please. And just wanted to mention quickly. So hopefully now you very clearly can see that in the law, there are requirements around career pathways. So that should have answered the question, do we really need to do career pathways. The answer is yes, we all do together as a group. But in 2016 and I just wanted to highlight that 12 federal agencies developed a career pathways joint letter, building on a letter, joint letter, that we developed in 2012. Again, just emphasizing how important career pathway system-level work is in order to ensure that we have skilled workers. And we can provide that letter to you. And I will show you later on where you can find all these career pathways resources. But this is -- to get 12 federal agencies to sign a letter is a big effort. And we were able to do it because there is such a commitment to this work. And to understand that folks at Social Security Administration and Transportation and Defense and Justice and HUD, that all of these agencies really understand that we need to be working together strategically and thoughtfully to be able to develop programming that then can get folks skilled and ready and into good jobs and high-quality career pathways. And I think that's my last slide.

>> Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much, Sara. It's really helpful to hear the critical points of WIOA and the roles and responsibilities as it relates to career pathways to help frame the work that everyone is doing in this area. Really appreciate it. Well, now we're going to hear how the regulations and components of WIOA are being implemented in the field. Then I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Joe Ashley to discuss career pathways and connecting the dots with Virginia VR. So Dr. Ashley.

>> Thank you, Nikki. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the webinar today. And I do want to say that I've had the opportunity to use the resources of the LEAD Center with Rebecca and her team, and Nikki, your team with WINTAC, and Brian and the DEI group. And the technical assistance I've received from all of you has been excellent. So I did want to say thank you for what you've done for us in the past and continue to do for us. I'm excited to be here today. And I was asked to talk about a couple things in particular. So we'll get through those, and then I'll talk about the stuff that I think is the most fun. So the stuff that what I was asked to speak to was the career pathways cross-agency efforts in Virginia. So the best way to describe this is to think about a long day at a training conference when the energy from good sessions is rolling. And the career pathway workgroup starts kind of like a joke. Two women walked into a bar. And they pick up a very powerful piece of recording equipment and sat down. So on a napkin, they literally sketched out their vision for getting agencies together to best be able to utilize this new concept called career pathways and how it could be useful to helping people attain credentials that count. And so they turned that -- and it happened to be an assistant vice chancellor for career pathways in the community college system here in Virginia and the director of the Carl Perkins Program in Virginia at the time. And they began this journey for us in Virginia. In 2008, then governor Tim Kaine signed an executive order which created the Career Pathways Task Force. This task force was charged with creating a strategic plan for career pathways in Virginia. The workgroup -- or the task force ended up creating a shared vision across eight agencies that are responsible. Both workforce development -- workforce economic, and workforce development agencies were involved in this process. And they created this shared vision. They created the set of definitions. And then they had systemic expectations for some of the participants in the work who were involved in career pathways. If you think about -- let me just say for right now, let's take a look at the people that were involved. If you'd move on to the next slide please.

>> Brittany? Brittany?

>> So what we have here is the opportunity to -- I just wanted you to see that it starts with the chief workforce advisor to the governor is on our career pathways workgroup in Virginia. It is now called the Workgroup. In 2010, VR was added to this. So you'll see the Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services as one of the members of the workgroup. We also have that chief workforce advisor is now a cabinet level position. So the workgroup has been in the governor's office for a while as the chief workforce advisor to the governor. But now it's been raised to a cabinet level position. That speaks volumes for the importance they see in this effort. I would also say that the community colleges involved -- in Virginia, the community college is a title I workforce provider. All the title I grants come in through them. So the resource administrator for the WIOA title I is involved on this workgroup as well as the assistant vice chancellor for career pathways and the assistant vice chancellor for academics and research. So they have high-level folks sitting on the workgroup. It's all state agency folks. We also have the economic business, economic development partnership. So we have business sitting at the table. And the folks are looking at the economic development opportunities that are coming to Virginia so they can tie it to the workforce system. We also have the Department of Ed. It has the coordinator for adult ed is sitting on this workgroup as is the director for career and technical education. We've been asking lately for an instructional person as well as that level. The Virginia Employment Commission, that's title III in our state, Wagner-Peyser, as well as other kinds of programs for veterans and trade act are sitting there represented on the workgroup. We have the counsel on -- the higher ed council in Virginia, CHEV is what we call it. And that makes sure that the K-12 folks are looking at career pathways towards colleges. We have as well the Department of Social Services Workforce Services division folks, individuals, representing on this particular group. And the Department of Labor Industries has our person from -- the director of registered apprenticeships, which is critical, and we've some successes in that. We've learned a lot sitting in this workgroup. I would also say that we have -- we just added the Department of Veteran Services Transition Services and Employment to the workgroup. So you can see it's well represented across a number of agencies that have responsibility for implementing career pathways. Going to the next slide please. And one of the things that's critical with this group and to our Career Pathways for Individuals With Disabilities Project -- you know, you saw in the earlier slide on the six essentials of career pathways, you saw you got to get the cross-agency teams and partnerships developed. And this workgroup has been responsible for making that happen. You got to get the industry sector and business engagement. And they've been responsible and engaged in that process. But you've also got the education and training piece. And that's something that they've been aligned with the governor. I noted on one of the earlier slides, came out with this thing about the 50,000 credentials that count. The workgroup was a part of making sure that that process happened and helped align the systems to do that. They also looked at resources. They wrote several grants. One of them a grant from a private foundation which created our career coaches in Virginia. We've been able for our Career Pathways for Individuals With Disabilities Project to take advantage of those career coaches and done some training for them so that they can also support people with disabilities in the schools, the high schools, and the colleges where they work. So that's been a benefit to us. This workgroup, they also looked at other grants that are out there. And they've been responsible for bringing millions of dollars worth of career pathway focused grants into Virginia and making sure that we are all working together, moving in the same direction. That becomes critical. They serve as the advisory committee to our CPID grant in Virginia. We think that has been very helpful to us. We can bounce ideas off of them and make sure that whatever activities and resources we're applying, the direction we're going is consistent with the state vision for career pathways. And that we can ensure that people with disabilities are being considered every time they begin to look at how to move forward around career pathways. And that bringing people together to have those discussions is huge in this process. And we've been very fortunate with that. And they're spending the time with us to help give us feedback and make sure we're all moving in the same direction. This workgroup has also helped us understand other grants going on. American Promise Grant down in Southwest Virginia. We've been able to tap into that, as well as Valley 2 Virginia, which is an apprenticeship grant from the Department of Labor that we've been able to partner with. That's been a big deal. This particular workgroup got together, and they are how we got the DEI round eight in Virginia, that career pathways focus round eight. We got together as a group and came up with the writing of that particular response for the solicitation that's been awarded to Virginia. You want to go on to the next slide for me. One of the other pieces that we were asked to discuss today was around our system alignment efforts. And we started off looking at the alliance for quality career pathways. This comes out of the Center for Law and Social Policy. And it's a way -- Virginia was one of the original 10 states, as was Kentucky, to identify and be a part of this developing protocol for looking at the quality career pathways. How would you know it when.

>> Nikki? It looks like we may have lost Joe. Would you like to step in for a moment while he dials back?

>> Yeah, yeah. I was wondering, I was wondering if it was my phone or if it was Joe's phone. So yeah, hopefully we can get Joe back. But in the meantime, I will try and pick up where he left off.

>> It looks like he's still connected. Maybe he just accidentally muted himself. Yeah, he's muted.

>> Okay, all right. So maybe we can connect with him somehow and get him.

>> How is that?

>> Oh, there you go. Welcome back.

>> Somehow something muted -- I heard the two buttons and I'm not even close to that particular button.

>> But you know, Joe, if we made it through one of these without some kind of technical glitch, then, you know, we would already be amazing, wouldn't we? So there we go. All right, back to you, Joe.

>> Do remember what the last thing I said was that you heard? Because I kept going.

>> Yeah. You were on the CPID systems alignment effort. And you basically just kind of started that slide.

>> All right. I apologize to the audience for that. The systems alignment effort is around alliance for quality career pathways and it's really about looking at services and gaps in career pathway focused services in a particular area, like a local workforce board. This effort -- we've been having some issues making it work because what we've found out is a lot of front line people don't understand career pathways and what the opportunities are and the resources. I would suggest -- Sara mentioned that the law says you have to do this. I would say getting people into good employment opportunities is the best reason for having to do this. So what we're trying to do then is -- one of our workforce board executive director said, let's do a systems alignment meeting first. So we literally have a meeting convened by the local workforce board. And as Sara noted, it's their responsibility to look at career pathways, services, convene the workforce partners to see how to get them together and look for opportunities for co-enrollment where practicable. I think that this has been an interesting discussion. The local workforce board chairs or directors have been very willing to do this. We've had all four titles in the room. The discussions are different. And we've also had social services in the room and we've had other grant partners. And what we're learning is that people are very willing now to talk about things that are in front of them, who's eligible for the services, what makes them eligible for services, what they're being held accountable for. And at the end of the day, the discussions end up around opportunities for co-enrollment. We've also had some situations where people were wondering if having individuals with disabilities in their systems was going to create problems for them when it comes to performance. I admire people who are wanting to have that discussion because it gives us the opportunity in an open discussion to say, we can take care of that, here's how we support folks. This is going to be good. We have data from our DEI projects that shows it's going to work. But the discussions are worth having because then you end up improving systems and creating better access. So that's been a very positive aspect of what we've been doing. We've also had discussions with some of the other projects and grants out there to say, how can we better leverage resources, each of us with the other. So that part has been really critical in our process. And I just did one of those last week, I'm going out for two more this week. We're doing round two. And these discussions have been very helpful in leveraging resources and organizing people in the same direction. So we're looking forward to continuing those discussions. And I told Sara, I'm also going to borrow some of her slides for these presentations because they're spot on to the discussions we're having. And we really do appreciate that. Going to the next slide. But the thing that's the most important I think is -- and career pathway grants are great. There's four of them. Felipe's going to tell you about the others. They're all very unique and are doing great things in their states. And if what we're doing in Virginia doesn't work for you, look at the other states, because they each have something very positive to offer and are illuminating on how to embrace career pathways. And you'll find something I think in one of the four at least. But I would say that -- you know, we all talk about a level playing field. With assistive technology, with some of the access, enhancing access, through curriculum and other resources, like 503 or other advocacy, you could get close to leveling the playing field. But I would submit to those of those in VR and others who serve folks with barriers, that's not good enough. What we want is to look for an edge. We need to find something that creates an edge for our client so that they are the first in line for interviews. I'm not saying jobs, but interviews. That becomes critical in how we think. And that's the opportunity of career pathways. And you do this by the demand-side. I've done a lot of work in the past around career ladders and other kinds of postsecondary programs. But the difference in this and what I've seen over the last 20 years is the demand-side focus. By demand-side, I mean paying attention to businesses. We're very blessed here in Virginia, we have a very robust business development manager. People whose jobs are to go out and interface with business. We have it on both the DAR side and the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired. The grant came into both agencies. And both commissioners support this effort. And it's been a way that we can translate that into going out, talking to businesses, and saying, what is it you're looking for? They will tell you if you ask them. What skill sets are you looking for? Then you look for the credentials that match the skill sets. We've also been able -- our Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center here in Virginia has embraced this credentialing concept. And they helped create a manufacturing technician training. We literally through our grant had resources that we put in place with the Virginia Manufacturers Association. We have a staff person whose office is with the VMA. When VMA goes to talk to its members, somebody from our staff is right there with them. It makes a difference when you're in the discussion and you're introduced by somebody from the business. So that becomes critical in how we address some of these issues around business development. We also have an AP specialist on our grant. As we go through the Virginia Assistive Technology System. AP is critical to us. We've been able to use it to make sure people can access the training as well as moving onto accessing employment. And they follow-up. I've just been given my five-minute warning, so let me jump to a few other very important things. If you go onto that next slide for me. One of the things we've done is take -- we made a curriculum accessible. We use the curriculum that was about robotics in these camps that we do that are -- as we call them academies. Five-day career exploration opportunities where people put their hands on things. We did a robotics camp. And one of the things that happened was we used a curriculum that came from somebody who did 38 of these camps in Virginia for three weeks with general ed -- or actually the general population of current technical ed folks. We brought him in. We helped him redo his curriculum to make it accessible. That was the idea of our friends -- our colleagues at the Department for Blind and Vision Impaired. And we made a total accessible curriculum out of it. And he -- when I sat next to him at the rodeo where people showed off what they did, our students assembled robots. It basically used the Mars technology, Mars Lunar Technology. And he thought maybe at the end of the second day they'd have these things rolling. Well -- and assembled I mean. At the end of the break on the second day, they were bots on the ground rolling. They'd been coded. He had to reevaluate his curriculum three times to keep up with our students. It was transformational for him. The tyranny of low expectations is something we all have to address and be on top of to be sure that people understand the capacities, that our kids get as good as the students, the general ed students. Actually, he said we did in one week what they did in two. We've done something with the Blue Ridge Community College here in Virginia and the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center and the adult ed program up in the area. We needed a program that wasn't as intense in terms of academics as the manufacturing technician training. We did this certified logistics assistant or associate and technician. We literally started with the businesses, said, would you value this skill set? And here's the credential that models this skill set. They said, yes. Would you pay more? They said, yes, a dollar more an hour. Would you interview everybody? Yes. When they interviewed them, they didn't guarantee jobs but they guarantee interviews. What we went from there with is adult ed one week, making sure students have skill sets needed to be successful. We thought we'd be able to do the other curriculum in two weeks. We ended up having to go three. We had adult ed and the community college trainer in the classroom. We had somebody from CPID there to assist to make sure the supports were in place. And we had our AP people there to be sure that the assistive technology needed was there. This type of programming is really what makes a difference in ensuring access for folks. It came out of our work with the career pathways workgroup, that's led to us knowing the right people to ask and getting people to buy into us with this. And both -- that program is being replicated in other locations. I would also say the last slide I have is, our DEI, I mentioned the round eight, we're doing that in northern Virginia. And CPID has a contract with the Northern Virginia Technology Council to put us in front of people. The DEI round eight is going to have a contract with the community college to put a resource there to ensure access and help work with the programs. Adult ed has a resource up there to increase the bridge program. So we're running these two programs parallel, each supporting the other. We're trying to create a system, not a service. And by working together with that, we think we'll be able to accomplish that. And with that, Nikki, I'll turn it back over to you.

>> Great. Thanks you so much, Joe. It's really amazing to hear all the great work that's happening in Virginia and especially the impact it's really having on their consumers. Thanks so much. Okay, so we are rushing through now. I know somebody asked us to slow down a bit. Unfortunately, we're trying to get through the content and at least have you time to ask the questions. So I'm going to turn it over to Felipe with RSA to tell us more about how the Career Pathways for Individuals with Disabilities Demonstrations Projects are having a positive impact on the workforce system. And, Felipe, I'm going to let you know, you can hopefully do this in about five minutes so we can have time for questions, that would be wonderful.

>> Yes, I'll be happy to. I'm Latin American, so I'll fix that. I'm just kidding. First of all, I want to thank Joe for highlighting the overarching Virginia VR agency divisions that face career pathway systems. And about the agency participation in RSA's Career Pathways for Individuals With Disabilities, or CPID, program. And I want to step back a little bit and provide a little bit more background about the CPID project. It's purpose is to demonstrate successful career pathways practices and approaches dedicating individuals with disabilities and to encourage VR agencies to consider some of these practices or approaches for their state. The long and short of this, of CPID's mission, is to bring individuals with disabilities to the forefront of the WIOA promise of economic opportunity through career pathways. We fund four VR agencies: Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, and of course Virginia. And these career pathways are in fields of IT, advanced manufacturing, transportation, distribution and logistics, healthcare -- right, the health sciences -- architecture and construction, among others. I think Joe has given you a real good idea to how CPID works within a state. You know, there's a bunch of services, including preemployment services, and a lot of work in customized employment and workplace learning opportunities, flexible work education and training arrangements, accommodations, comprehensive supports for individuals. But you can tell by Joe's presentation, a lot of it is really focused on building education, training, and career advancement systems through engagement with employers and industry associations, with state and regional workforce development boards, and statewide advisory councils, with state and local education agencies, community colleges, career and technical training centers, with American Job Centers, the community rehab programs, community support services providers, as well as the education of labor, education and economic development. It's a multi-building system. So each grantee has a distinct approach. Virginia, you know, Joe talked about his approach for Virginia and role of Virginia Manufacturing. Now, Georgia, it focuses on students and out-of-school youth with disabilities. And it uses, among other things, an innovative social media campaign for outreach, career exploration, and career readiness. And to develop a catalog of engaging informative game apps, which are available at Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Kentucky has a lot of work on work-based living. I keep saying living. Work-based learning, and also promoting or encouraging STEM. Exposing high school students to STEM opportunities. And they're also are advancing working on developing registered apprenticeship opportunities. Nebraska uses the upskill/backfill model. So basically they recruit former VR clients who are employed but who might want to advance their careers further. And so they provide education, training, and other services for these individuals to advance in their career. Then, they try to place new VR clients into the entry-level positions vacated by the advancing clients. So and I note that both Kentucky and the Virginia CPID projects directly involve both the blind and general VR agencies. So now, the latest trend of our grantees is moving increasingly into registered apprenticeships and customized employment as specific strategies within the career pathways grant. So for example, Virginia -- the Georgia VR is working with the US Department of Labor's Employment First Project and with several labor unions to expand customized employment and apprenticeship opportunities for CPID participants. And Kentucky, the Kentucky Workforce Cabinet and the Kentucky Department of Labor's Registered Apprenticeship Office and others work with the Kentucky VR to sponsor an employer conference on apprenticeships, which drew 30 employees and 90 secondary to postsecondary educators and other workforce development leaders in the state. Nebraska promotes customized employment and apprenticeships for its CPID participants through, first, through its VR certificate program. Which is in partnership with the community colleges and several businesses in the state. But also, they work with employers on an individualized basis for individual participants. So half of CPID participants may contact employers that they work with to see if they can develop individualizing work opportunities for their CPID participants. Now, Virginia, now they established a pre-apprenticeship office program within their MTT program, that Joe talked about. And they've worked with Hershey Corporation to establish a registered apprenticeship program there. So far, one MTT graduate has been placed in the Hershey program, with more to come. So these are just examples of the new directions that our grantees are moving in because of support the inspiration of the CPID program. So I know I have very few minutes left. But I want to let you know that there's more information about CPID in general and each of the CPID projects in these four states. It's available at the National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Materials. And the best way to go is through www.ncrtm.ed.gov/resources.aspx and then just scroll down for career pathways for individuals with disabilities. Also, last fall at the CSAVR conference -- and many of you were there -- there was a panel of CPID participants, all four were present. And there was a podcast that was developed and heavily distributed. There's a long link that appeared on the PowerPoint slide. But the best way would be go to http://vrworkforcestudio.com. And I'm sure you could find a way to the podcast that way. This podcast has been very popular. It's been downloaded 7500 times, that's an estimate, through iTunes and a variety of primary and secondary outlets since November. And if you do an iTunes search for "workforce podcast," it shows that this CPID episode is among the top 20 of all workforce podcast episodes on iTunes. So the word is getting out. And so I invite you to listen to that podcast as well. Finally, I can provide -- I can help direct you to the other grantees to answer any of your questions. If you email me at felipe.lulli@ed.gov. And so without further ado, I give the mic back to Nikki to answer your questions.

>> Great. Thanks so much, Felipe. We're actually going to jump back to Sara briefly for just about like one minute, Sara, if you can just let us know a little bit about the Career Pathways Toolkit, that would be wonderful.

>> Yes. Thanks, Nikki. So yeah, and you can go to the next slide. We've got this great Career Pathways Toolkit. It's an enhanced guide and workbook for system development. And again, this is about really bringing your partners together to think strategically about how you want to develop career pathway programming. And Joe gave some great examples of how the state of Virginia is doing that. I think this tool is really something that can help have those kind of difficult conversations, have the conversations about how do we get by from our partners, who needs to be sitting at the table, how do we get employers to really not only just be a partner, but help lead the work and really be kind of hand in hand in moving this system-building forward. Within the toolkit, you've got examples, there's lots of worksheets, resources. This toolkit, we enhanced it into a workbook because when we called it a toolkit, lots of folks said, there's not really any tools in here, there's a lot of words. It was a very long toolkit. It's got a lot of words and strategies, but folks really wanted some actual hard-core like workbook or worksheets to kind of fill out and use when they're sitting with their partners. And so I really encourage everybody to take a look at this. These are downloadable. They're modular. You can fill them in. They're interactive. You can use them really to do your system work. Next slide please. This is where you can find the toolkit, at careerpathways.workforcegps.org. This is another -- we have a career pathways collection on workforce GPS, which is the Department of Labor's Technical Assistance site. There are lots of other good resources there, but this is where you can find the toolkit. And the next slide please. And here you'll see, these are the modules. It's based on the six career pathways. So if you really wanted to do some hard-core work with your partners where you're sitting down and you're thinking about funding, what your funding needs are, what are your sources -- where you would pull them from, how do we use Snap NT. What are some other HUD funding or other sources that we just have not thought about, you can use one of the modular's, element four, on identifying funding needs and sources. Again, element two, how do we get our businesses engaged in leading in this work, there's lots of great resources on this. So you don't necessarily need to do all of it in any specific order, but you can dig in on any of these different six key elements. I really recommend when you're doing this work to take a look. So I think that's it for these slides. But again, highly recommend that you go to that. And I mentioned the joint letter earlier on. You can also find the six -- the joint letter on this workforce GPS site as well. So back to you, Nikki, for Q&A.

>> Great. Thanks, Sara. And I do encourage everybody to go take a look at it. It has a lot of great resources. The next slide is actually a resource slide and it does tell you again how to get to the resource section of the toolkit where there are a lot of wonderful links. And then again, the Community of Practice link, to be able to join the Community of Practice. We only have just a couple of minutes, but I'm going to quickly turn it over to Brian to help facilitate a few questions. If we can just pick some out. And again, a reminder to email, put your email address next to your question so we can still follow-up after the event. You there, Brian?

>> I am. Thank you, Nikki. I guess I'd just like to start with a question for Joe. Joe, you there?

>> I think there's been some problems with audio today. And some of our participants have lost audio, as well as Joe. So we're trying to resolve that.

>> Okay.

>> Maybe take some questions. I think there were some questions in the chat, I believe, weren't there?

>> Well, I'm checking that, and I'm not seeing any.

>> I see one question asking, how about working adults with disabilities, how can we include those folks to take advantage of career pathways services and assist them to get better jobs, to better themselves and earn more in wages? Thank you.

>> Oh, well, that's a great question. Is there anybody on the panel with audio who'd be willing to try to give that an answer?

>> Maybe Felipe.

>> Yeah. This is Felipe from our state.

>> Thank you, Felipe.

>> I mentioned earlier, the Nebraska CPID, it's designed precisely to reach out to working individuals with disabilities. And so what I would advise you is to contact the Nebraska VR agency. And I can give you contact information. If you email me -- I gave you my email address earlier. Just email me and I'll put you in touch with Nebraska.

>> Thank you. I hope that that answers the question.

>> And Nebraska's upskill/backfill model is wonderful to really get in terms of workers. We only have one more minute. So did we have any other questions, Brian?

>> Not that I'm seeing, although I would ask Shannon.

>> And it does look like Joe is on.

>> Oh, okay. Are you there, Joe?

>> I do not any additional questions.

>> Yeah, I think Joe lost audio. We're right at an hour now anyway. So again, if people want to reach out -- if you can move the next slide, Shannon. Here is our contact information again with our emails. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We are going to send a follow-up email out to everybody who's registered. Because we know there were some lost sound and things like that. And then you can ask us directly additional questions. Thanks so much to the panel, to Sara, to Joe, to Felipe, and then to our TA team as well, Rebecca and Brian and Nikki, and of course Shannon and Brittany who have kept us going from the technical assistance perspective. And thank you everybody for attending. We'll close out now then.

>> Thank you.

>> Bye-bye, everybody.

>> Thank you.