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The goal of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is to foster
a prepared, competitive, safe, and secure workforce. As
part of the Department's work to extend that goal to all
Americans, the Center for Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives (CFBCI) exists to help more Americans overcome
barriers to employment, fi nd jobs, and stay employed
through the unique work of local faith-based and community
organizations (FBCOs).
DOL has invested in results-driven partnerships with
FBCOs since 2001 that have touched the lives of countless
struggling Americans, with a special focus on individuals
facing the greatest barriers to employment. Internationally,
DOL-funded partnerships with FBCOs have withdrawn
or prevented more than 1,000,000 children from being
engaged in exploitive child labor around the world.
Innovative programs at DOL have produced the following
results:
- 150,645 hard-to-serve individuals have been assisted in
DOL-funded programs at FBCOs to help them overcome
barriers to employment and reach their long-term career
goals;
- 87,128 men, women, and young people have been
placed in jobs, training, or education;
- The President's Prisoner Reentry Initiative has achieved
a recidivism rate signifi cantly less than half the national
average;
- Small FBCOs participating in two DOL pilot programs
harnessed more than 150,000 volunteer hours in their
DOL-funded projects.
DOL has created or strengthened more than one dozen
grant and pilot programs in order to build government-
FBCO partnerships that serve the chronically unemployed,
ex-offenders, homeless veterans, disabled jobseekers,
at-risk youth, jobseekers who lack access to DOL-funded
services, and many more.
- The President's Prisoner Reentry Initiative and DOL's
Benefi ciary-Choice Contracting program are reducing
unemployment and recidivism among ex-prisoners;
- DOL pioneered intermediary grant models and awarded
grants to 65 intermediary organizations, which have
sub-awarded funds to more than 500 small FBCOs
serving a wide range of individuals in need;
- States participating in the SHARE Network Initiative
have opened more than 95 "Access Points" located in
FBCOs in low-income neighborhoods to expand access
to publicly-funded employment services;
- DOL also pioneered a mini-grant model that has
awarded grants to 247 grassroots FBCOs in 42 states
from 2002-2007.
In order to build public-private partnerships that
continue to transformed lives, DOL has:
- Updated its regulations to ensure equal treatment
for all organizations and trained more than 1,400
nonprofi t and public workforce system leaders on
how to comply with those regulations;
- Provided training and technical assistance to more
than 4,745 FBCO and public workforce system staff
on a wide variety of issues;
- Awarded 1,365 grants worth $742 million to FBCOs
from 2002-2007.
On June 26, 2008, DOL released its final report on the
vital role played by the President's Faith-Based and
Community Initiative in advancing key national goals
through the Department since 2001.
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