The purpose of the Opportunity Partnership Grant (OPG) program is to assist displaced/dislocated workers secure employment by providing middle-skill and high-skill work-based learning training in growth industry sectors recognized and driven by employer's needs. The Opportunity Partnership Grant training program is designed to support the development of high-quality industry-specific work-based learning, pre-apprenticeship training, or vocational training components that contributes to a high-skilled, high-paid workforce.
The Department will focus their investments on training programs that result in high-quality industry specific work-based training, pre-apprenticeship training, or vocational training that contributes to a high-skilled, high paid workforce. The training offered must lead to an industry recognized credential that creates opportunities in growth industry sectors.
Occupational training must fall within a labor demand occupation in one of the state's targeted industry sectors or in a labor demand occupation determined by the local Workforce Development Boards (WDBs). The state's targeted industry sectors include:
- Advanced Manufacturing
- Biopharmaceutical Life Sciences
- Construction/Utilities
- Financial Services
- Health Care
- Leisure, Hospitality, and Retail
- Technology
- Transportation, Logistics, and Distribution.
One proposal must be submitted for each job title. An applicant must submit a separate proposal for each individual job title within an industry sector. An applicant's employer-partner may have a need to hire various job titles that have different training requirements and associated costs; therefore, a separate proposal must be submitted for each job title. Additionally, no more than one industry-sector should be targeted in the applicant's proposal.
The applicant must propose training for qualified displaced/dislocated workers with the intent to provide instruction in occupation skill areas specifically required by the employer(s) in order to fill immediate or projected full-time job openings. Employment for the trainee must be classified and determined by the employer as full-time employment. Training is to be conducted with the employer's intent to employ all trained individuals for a period of at least six months following successful completion of training.
Approximately $4,000,000 was available for funding in FY2020. Please contact the agency for more information about past funded projects.