CCWA is honored to have received two awards at this year’s Virginia's Community Colleges' Chancellor’s Awards Banquet during the HIRE Education Conference in Roanoke, Va. Amy Taloma, Coordinator, Health Care Programs received the award for Outstanding Achievement by a College Faculty Member for her work in dramatically expanding enrollments, completions and credentials in a variety of health care training programs and for her success in developing paid internships, clinical experiences and other forms of work-based learning in many of our health care classes. The award recognizes her success in partnering with VCU Health, Henrico County’s 9-1-1 Center and a variety of long-term care facilities in the region to offer internships and post-program job placements for CCWA's health care students.
CCWA also won an award for Outstanding Achievement by a College through a Collaboration or Consortia of Partners for our partnership, led by CCWA Assistant Vice President Natalie Meredith, with the City of Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building (OCWB). OCWB serves low-income, unemployed and underemployed residents. Through an agreement with CCWA to deliver occupational training to OCWB clients in high-demand occupations, our team has trained and helped to place more than 300 clients (to date) into living-wage jobs.
“Both awards represent the power of community partnerships and CCWA’s success working with community-based organizations to train regional residents for in-demand careers. Our relationships with VCU Health and several geriatric care facilities have enabled us to provide students with paid work-based learning in addition to the classroom experience. Our partnership with OCWB has led to sustained and robust student enrollments, completions and credentials in CDL (truck driving), health care and other FastForward training programs,” said Elizabeth Creamer, Vice President, CCWA, the workforce development division of Brightpoint and Reynolds community colleges.