Tallahassee Community College Gets Massive Grant To Support Workforce Development

We’ve written countless articles on workforce development and we’ve written a little bit about hurricane relief in Florida. So today, we’re going to talk about both. Namely, the intersection of hurricane relief meeting workforce training to address issues relating to it. Hurricane Michael which hit Florida in 2018, was the first category 5 hurricane to hit the state of Florida since Hurricane Andrew in the ’90s, and Florida is still recovering. Now millions of dollars will be awarded to two Florida educational institutions to help with hurricane relief. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity has awarded $4.7 million to Tallahassee Community College and Chipola College in Marianna.

Can A Grant Help Workers & Those Struggling From The Impact of Hurricane Michael?

Hurricane Michael hit the panhandle of the state of Florida on October 9th, 2018. Then Florida Governor, Rick Scott said “Michael is a massive storm that could bring total devastation to parts of our state.” Evacuation orders went out for certain counties close to the coastline. The National Centers for Environmental Information have concluded after the fact that Hurricane Michael caused $18.4 billion in damage to property and infrastructure. This explains why a grant award like the one awarded to TCC is so critical.

So this grant award will serve several purposes. It will allow for TCC to support construction trades, which will include:

• HVAC programs
• carpentry
• welding

All of these trades are in huge demand in the area because one of the issues we’ve constantly heard again and again is that there are often more jobs than skilled workers. We’ve seen this when it comes to STEM-related fields as well. This means that quite often jobs that need to be completed and do provide well-paid careers can go unfilled. That can be a real issue when you have so many people trying to rebuild from the impacts of a hurricane, and that need help in physically rebuilding structures.

Here’s what the TCC Vice President for Workforce Development, said about the importance of this grant award, for both workers and community:

“I would call it a cry that we’re hearing from local employers in dire need of this particular workforce. We have workforce programs now that relate to HVAC and manufacturing. This grant will do something special. It will allow us to expand the program offerings,” said Moore.

This grant will create 6 new jobs at Tallahassee Community College, and will offer training for up to 500 new workers.

Grantwatch Understands The Need For Hurricane Relief

We understand how important funding is to encourage much-needed workforce development. We also understand how important it is that there are grants that exist to help facilitate disaster relief. That’s why we have an entire grant category listed dedicated to grants for disaster relief. These grants can be for nonprofits, state agencies, and other eligible organizations.

We have lots of different grant categories! If you have any questions about any of these categories or anything else, you can contact our customer-support team! You can reach our amazing support team by calling 561-249-4129!