This grant supports the expansion of MicroTest, a grassroots effort to improve the quality of data on the performance of anti-poverty, microenterprise development programs in the United States. MicroTest was established by and for practitioners interested in documenting and strengthening the level of performance in the field. Initiated in 1997, it has become a proven process through which practitioners define, debate, test, and refine benchmarks based on actual experience serving low-income individuals.

Founded in 1991, the Association for Enterprise Opportunity is the national trade association of organizations committed to micro-enterprise development. It provides over 450 members with a forum, information, and a voice to promote enterprise opportunity for people and communities with limited access to economic resources. Since its inception, the Association for Enterprise Opportunity has made an impact on federal micro-enterprise policy, as well as on training the micro-enterprise industry. This renewal will allow the association to continue to provide critical services to develop strong and effective U.S. micro-enterprise programs that assist underserved entrepreneurs in starting, stabilizing, and expanding businesses.

This final grant renewal will allow the Corporation for Enterprise Development to continue to provide funding and technical assistance to six state microenterprise associations to build their capacity to network and become advocates for sustaining effective microenterprise practice, and to continue to assist in the formation of an expanded federal microenterprise policy.

Rubicon Programs Incorporated is a high-performing, multi-program workforce development organization serving the high-needs areas of the San Francisco Bay region. With the guidance and direction of a strategic plan that was conducted in 2006, the organization is undertaking a strategic expansion of its workforce services model that helps people to overcome the barriers of homelessness, poverty, and disabilities. Rubicon Programs Incorporated's experience will provide a model for additional regional approaches to workforce development.

The Sector Skills Academy, a project of the Aspen Institute, will expand the ranks of practitioners who are knowledgeable about sectoral employment strategies and want to become leaders in their field. There are currently 72 Sector Skills Academy alumni. Individuals from a variety of institutional settings will participate in the academy's fourth class. The academy will draw upon the experiences of leading sectoral practitioners who have direct knowledge of a wide range of approaches to effecting change that will benefit low-income workers. Through a curriculum based on structured, experiential, and group learning, participants will gain the skills to lead the sectoral employment field as it expands in breadth, scope, and impact.

This renewal grant will allow ACCION USA to complete work on innovations launched to increase the scale and efficiency of its microlending. In the coming year, ACCION USA will work to develop its Internet lending platform, microcredit scoring system, and strategic partnerships initiative. In coordination with the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunity Program, ACCION USA's experiences will be documented and disseminated to a broad audience of microenterprise practitioners and stakeholders.

This general purposes grant will impact 133,600 direct service healthcare workers through PHI's direct practice, and many more broadly through its national policy research and advocacy efforts. The support will enable PHI to expand its network of healthcare worker training programs. In addition, this grant will strengthen healthcare worker benefit advocacy in selected states and nationally while allowing PHI to disseminate promising practices that will result in increasing workers' productivity and benefits.

Through its local and regional chapters, Goodwill Industries International, Inc. provides temporary staffing services to 14,600 people annually. The temporary staffing program is an integral component of Goodwill Industries International, Inc.'s mission of providing services to persons with disabilities or other disadvantaging conditions. This grant will provide partial support for Goodwill Industries International, Inc. to create a national network to strengthen its staffing services for individuals with barriers to employment.

This grant will begin to develop a base of knowledge about Regional Skills Alliances that does not currently exist. This work will allow the Mott Foundation to continue its catalytic role on sectoral workforce development in Michigan. Sectoral employment components such as Regional Skills Alliances can help companies increase their competitiveness and contribute to their regional economies. Regional Skill Alliances can also help attract more firms to an area once the area begins to be perceived as a hub for a particular industry. As these results become more widespread, additional economic benefits should accrue in Michigan.

Jobs for the Future, in partnership with the National Council for Workforce Education, will support a new generation of college innovation building upon Breaking Through, an earlier Mott Foundation-supported national initiative. This initiative is aimed at expanding effective strategies for helping low-skilled, low-income adults enter and succeed in community college occupational degree/credential programs and subsequently succeed in the labor market.

This grant to Jobs for the Future, in partnership with the National Council for Workforce Education, will support a state-level community college initiative in Michigan that will create and expand pathways designed to move low-skilled adults to college level certificates and degrees.

This grant will allow Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education to identify, support, and convene a network of community colleges located in the Lower Rio Grande Valley that have an institutional commitment and capacity to move adults with low skills to college level certificates and degrees. This initiative would build upon and connect to current networking practices and implementation strategies pioneered by Jobs for the Future in a previous Mott Foundation-funded program that enabled adult students to enter and succeed in community college occupational degree and credential programs. The scope of work over three years would include a funded demonstration project at one college in the Lower Rio Grande Valley; a robust peer learning network among a set of interested colleges located there; connection to the national community college learning network; and technical assistance, knowledge development, and network facilitation. This first-year grant is envisioned as a period to lay the groundwork for a full-scale launch of the high poverty area initiative beginning in the second year.

This grant will allow PHI to deepen its presence in Michigan by improving career advancement opportunities and the training infrastructure for direct service healthcare workers in the state, securing expanded healthcare coverage for thousands of direct service healthcare workers in Michigan who do not have healthcare coverage, and helping Michigan direct service healthcare workers to attain measurable progress toward economic self-reliance. Finally, through this grant, PHI will begin to establish a Michigan based PHI Midwest Regional Center to expand the impact of its efforts to other states in the region.

This grant to PHI will enable the organization to enhance its communications capabilities. Specifically, it will allow PHI to increase its number of staff professionals; consolidate and upgrade its website; hire consultants to develop media plans; produce professional, learner-centered curricula that allow for the dissemination of PHI's unique training programs; improve its national clearinghouse on direct service healthcare workforce employment; and increase its usage of new internet tools.

This grant to the Direct Care Alliance will launch a comprehensive, multiyear, multipronged strategy to improve working conditions for direct-care workers and address the policy and social barriers that ignore and undervalue the essential direct-care workforce sector. The goal is to improve the long-term care job with appropriate training, pay, benefits, and other supports, thereby stabilizing the fastest growing sector in healthcare, improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of working women and their families, and enabling our nation's elders to enjoy independent living with quality of care, services, and supports.