As we end this extraordinary and unusual year called 2020, “the year of working through a pandemic,” NJCA responded to the programmatic needs of our members to further our mission of supporting opportunity youth to become productive and independent citizens. NJCA is pleased with our accomplishments and grateful that with the direction, involvement and leadership of our board of directors, members, and staff and consultants, we made a positive impact on the entire Job Corps community.

Below are a few of our accomplishments this year:

• Continued to strengthen the relationship between NJCA and ETA leadership.
• Secured essential flexibilities for Job Corps stakeholders regarding paid leave for federal contractors via legislative language in the CARES Act.
• Secured legislative language in both the House and Senate Phase 4 COVID-19 bills to address age and time limitations for Job Corps enrollments.  
• Worked with staff for the House Education and Labor Committee to include NJCA-member identified policy priorities in the House-passed HEROES 2.0 Act.  
• Enhanced our relationship with leadership at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Forest Service to execute and support their new plans to reinvigorate the role of the Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers in USDA.
• Reinvigorated our membership newsletter with the development and debut of the monthly Job Corps Insider. We give a special thank you to Penn Foster and MP & F Strategic Communications for their sponsorship.
• Distributed policy and congressional updates through real-time information alerts from our NJCA President & CEO to the Association’s membership and larger Job Corps community.
• Developed and facilitated more than 15 professional development courses on key virtual learning, COVID-19, communications and student-centric topics. These averaged 250 attendees per training. Our member leaders and expert faculty were instrumental to the success of our offerings. Thank you to MTC, Odle Management Group, SIATech, Inc., and Penn Foster, API, and Horizons Youth Services for your active participation. (a couple screen shots)
• Our Fall Virtual Convening, inOctober was a huge success and brought together new voices to our membership and record participation from our Congressional Champions of Job Corps.
• Built out the NJCA’s social media presence and debuted NJCA’s Instagram page (@thenjca).

We look forward to an equally enriching and robust 2021!  We have new challenges to meet, new creativity to share, and new partnerships to make for the benefit of our youth.  More to come …