After hearing dozens of stories of chronic underemployment in its 2008 house meeting campaign, AMOS leaders formed an issue research team on Workforce Development and began exploring how the central Iowa labor market was working (or not working) for those who needed it most.
What they found was a chasm between people who worked hard at dead end jobs and dozens of central Iowa employers who had good paying, career track jobs ready for the taking that they couldn’t fill. Project IOWA was born out of that chasm.
AMOS leaders took a high powered Iowa business and government delegation to San Antonio, TX to study Project QUEST, a labor market intermediary that closed a gap just like the one we found in Iowa in Texas. Slowly but forcefully with patience and persistence AMOS raised enough seed money to launch our version of Project QUEST in February of 2012. Christened, Project IOWA (Iowa Opportunities for Workforce Advancement), it is a bridge organization that connects the under and unemployed with high quality training through DMACC and Mercy College of Health Sciences with central Iowa employers who need skilled workers.
To date, Project IOWA has trained and placed over 200 formerly impoverished central Iowans into career track living wage jobs. For more information on this initiative visit their website at www.projectiowa.org.