Cherish Every Child and partners from the business community hosted a conference on Monday, November 19, Building Better Workforce: A Business Conference for Western Massachusetts. At this conference, 200 business leaders heard from Dr. James J. Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economics from the University of Chicago, who presented the economic case for investing in young children, as well as Dr. Paul Harrington from the Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies who discussed the status of the region’s workforce.

Because we know it is increasingly difficult for businesses, large and small, to find employees in the Western Massachusetts marketplace with appropriate skills, we collaborated with partners including MassMutual Financial Group, Verizon, the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts, the Regional Employment Board, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the region’s chambers of commerce on this event, whose goal was to tie education to economic development.

Building a Better Workforce offered a roadmap with current and future implications: how early education and a range of initiatives in the region from pre-kindergarten through adult literacy programs, as well as vocational training, will yield a more educated and more skilled workforce.

To read Dr. Harrington’s presentation...

To read Dr. Heckman’s presentation...

The conference was featured on the front page of The Republican on Tuesday, November 20. Read more...

BusinessWest also featured an article on the conference. Read more...