Job Training Albuquerque reaches milestone in training more than 1,000 workers

Cuidando Los Niños provides critical services for children and families experiencing homelessness in the city.

Those services include early childhood education, supportive housing and parent education. Cuidando Los Niños, which has been open for nearly 30 years, recently sent staff members to undergo training to bolster their efforts in helping the city’s neediest families.

That education was provided by Job Training Albuquerque, a partnership between the city and Central New Mexico Community College that offers a variety of free training programs for employers.

Job Training Albuquerque, or JTA, has reached a milestone since its inception in January 2020. To date, the program has helped over 1,000 workers at 203 small businesses in the city. In the nearly four years the program has been around, participating employers have reported that jobs have grown by 655, with a 24% increase in wages.

Natasha Gacinski, Cuidando Los Niños’ senior director of program operations, said the Women’s Leadership Development course offered by the University of New Mexico — and paid for by JTA — has been especially helpful in keeping her and other staff “upwardly mobile.”

“We are mostly women who work here,” she said. “There’s three of us (in training) right now and more who are enrolled next semester. It’s a unique experience to be a woman in leadership and it can be really isolating sometimes. This kind of helps us create a little community.”

JTA, while free, does have some requirements.

As part of the requirement to go through the program and receive training, businesses must be within Albuquerque city limits. They must also be incorporated as either for-profit or non-profit business in the state and have fewer than 500 employees. They also must have been located in Albuquerque for a year and willing to increase their workforce by one employee in the two years following the training.

The point ultimately is to skill up the local workforce by increasing access and removing barriers to courses offered through JTA.

Cuidando Los Niños has also used other courses in JTA for training its employees. Gacinski said JTA helps pay for the 45-hour Course for Early Childhood Educators, a course required by the Children, Youth and Families Department.

“We have a lot of training requirements and they usually come at a cost to our teachers,” Gacinski said. “So now with Job Training Albuquerque, they do not have to pay for anything. They’re able to advance their education without worrying about paying for it.”

She said getting that training paid for is essential to helping workers have to worry about one less thing related to the job, one that sees Cuidando employees often deal with stressful and traumatic situations when helping families in need.

“Our teachers are incredible — they experience secondary trauma all the time,” Gacinski said. “We obviously have a lot of CYFD calls, we see abuse, we see neglect more often than you would at a typical preschool. Any burden that we can take off of them, it’s our continuous goal to do that.”

Others have utilized JTA, too, like Powerhouse Electric owner Joseph Wojcik, who participated in the lineworker program at CNM.

“I had been looking at CNM’s lineworker program for about five years because I wanted to become a more well-rounded electrician,” Wojcik said. “I was going to take the course no matter what, but the funding from JTA allowed me to enroll and complete the program sooner than I had planned.”

JTA’s success through nearly four years has seen it gain some global recognition, too. This year, the program won two gold “Excellence in Economic Development” awards from the International Economic Development Council, or IEDC.

That includes a gold award in the “Partnerships with Educational Institutions” category for its partnership with CNM on the JTA program, as well as a gold award in the “Talent Development & Retention” category, which honors programs that create strategies aimed at strengthening the local workforce.

Both the city and CNM remain bullish on the future of the program, one they see benefiting the community for years to come. CNM President Tracy Hartzler said JTA has proven to be a “remarkable success” for local businesses and their workforce.

“We’re proud to be continuing our partnership with the City of Albuquerque to expand this well-established tool that empowers both small businesses and employees with education and training resources,” Hartzler said. “We’re looking forward to JTA creating even more prosperity for businesses, employees, and our community in the years ahead.”