Integrating with the New National Council for the American Worker: The First Crowd-Sourced Social Media Platform for Work-Learn Programs

  SCRANTON, PA - 07/20/2018 (PRESS RELEASE JET)

Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order encouraging businesses to create training programs that close the skills gap for Americans. Twenty-Three companies signed on, including IBM, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, FedEx Corp, Home Depot and Walmart. To coincide with these efforts, Dream2Career (D2C) developed a crowd-sourced social media platform that opens the lines of communication between businesses and tomorrow’s talent.  This platform called the D2C Directory promotes work-learn projects to local communities. Users can easily find career-clustered, workforce-generated learning data that is useful for all members of the community including K-20 students, special needs groups, veterans, displaced workers and even ex-convicts. This social media platform reaches Main Street in a format that is familiar and effective for everyone.

Working with industry experts, Dream2Career helps educators and students learn about the future of business in emerging markets like artificial intelligence, solar power, the gig economy, manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things. Students are also learning about high-demand industries and are benefiting from engagement in ways that were never anticipated. Essentially joining efforts between education and business leaders is changing the world of education and unifying communities around real employment opportunities. 

Aligning with these efforts, the new D2C Directory offers a win-win-win solution for businesses, students, and educators. This platform helps organize and promote work-learn projects with the intention of helping students find the information that they need to be successful when they are searching for sustainable careers.  Dream2Career focuses on enhancing awareness of current work-learn programs while encouraging more businesses to participate in the development of alternate career pathways programs that essentially eliminate the skills gap and save students money.

Dream2Career CEO Dr. Kathleen Houlihan, who is a former college professor, says, “Educators and business professionals wholeheartedly believe students shouldn't waste their time and money on educational programs with no future earning potential. Therefore, Dream2Career created this networked community where businesses and schools can promote their shared work-learn programs. This solution is not only socially responsible, but it decreases employee attrition and increases access to a qualified talent pool for the businesses”.

Discover, Boeing, Toyota, and Starbucks are all benefiting from work-learn programs that were developed with the help of high schools, colleges and other training programs to meet future hiring needs. Students benefit from work-learn programs because they are typically offered at a lower cost, or in the above cases, where they offer free tuition. Educators are also winning because they are engaging with real industry examples, making classroom content more interesting and engaging. In some instances, teachers are being compensated for industry training and the work-learn activities happening after school or over the summer. These solutions help communities flourish and are promotable through the D2C Directory.

As an added benefit to businesses, in a world of ever-increasing marketing costs, the D2C Directory offers the only zero CPC option in the work-learn space.  Furthermore, there is absolutely no cost to the end-user to participate in the online discussions about the work-learn programs or to access the searchable directory. This solution is built as an advanced social media platform that will grow and provide easy access to information that pertains to the workforce of the future. 

The President's Executive Order works with companies that are interested in building an enhanced workforce pipeline that eliminates the skills gap and benefits both the businesses and their communities. As part of this initiative, the government will also be creating the National Council for the American Worker that will help to inform the network. This collaborative concept offers organizations a socially responsible solution that aligns efforts among government, industry and the educational system.