In a significant breakthrough for telework, the Arizona Dept. of Commerce has funded a "Home-Based Workforce Resource Center" for Prescott.
Apparently the first of its kind in the U.S., the brick-and-mortar center will begin with a one-year grant of $187,000, the AZ Dept. of Commerce said yesterday by phone.
The news was announced recently by our friends Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham in their newsletter of the Future of Work. Among other activities, The Future of Work reports on trends in distributed work. Jim and Charlie are also the principals of Prescott, AZ's, Work Design Collaborative, which will be the prime subcontractor for the grant.
According to the newsletter, the grant was awarded to the Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACOG). "The center will be an extension of NACOG's current 'One-Stop' Workforce Investment Act resources aimed at meeting the workforce development, training, and assessment needs of a unique group of workers who are launching their own new businesses."
The Center is also intended to serve as a model regionally. As global warming mounts and it becomes clearer that the suburban "sprawl-and-crawl" model is unsustainable, Chris and I sincerely hope that it will light the way nationally as well.
We salute the AZ Dept. of Commerce, NACOG, the Prescott Mayor's Advisory Committee on Economic Development, and the Work Design Collaborative for their roles in this wonderful development, and we wish them every success.
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