Swivel, step, repeat

A few years ago, The Nourish Foundation was founded to raise awareness to the disparities in living and sustainable wages in the workforce. To address these gaps, the supported programs facilitate workforce and life skills development yielding employment opportunities with partner businesses that uphold living wage commitments. While this goal remains, the recent changes in our country and around the world required the workforce development programs – initially launched in the culinary industry – to pivot to best serve the community in times of crisis as well as adapt to economic demands. 

Through programs including the Adopt-a-SIP program, which provided nutritious, locally-sourced meals to hospitality workers who lost jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Nourish Foundation remains adaptable to supporting the community workforce, including those outside of the culinary industry.

The Nourish Foundation is shifting support to an immediate area of need – support services for adults pursuing education for sustainable careers in fields that support our community including healthcare and tech. For many adults seeking a new career path, like those who receive scholarships, continue to face remaining challenges in the pursuit of certifications requiring a full time commitment. For those supporting their household and forgoing full-time work while in school, loss of income leads to challenges in paying for living expenses, child and/or elder care, and reliable transportation to campus. These difficult decisions that many Austin-residents face on a daily basis are responsible for significant attrition rates from career certification programs.

The Nourish Foundation is actively working towards providing “Wraparound Social Services” that are built to provide career and household support resources to adult students from single-earner households as well as those facing domestic abuse.

Undoubtedly, the Workforce Development programs supported by The Nourish Foundation will continue to adapt to the needs of our community to best serve life skills development and employment with partners who commit to providing living wages to their workers.

We invite you to stay tuned as we continue to evolve our offerings and programming support  to ensure that The Nourish Foundation shows up for those who need it, where they need it with the tools that can enable them to flourish.