Transgender job training program fast-tracked
The program is run through Project Empowerment, an $11 million-a-year program paid for with D.C. tax dollars that helps hard-to-employ city residents such as ex-convicts and ex-addicts find work. Project Empowerment is a decade old, but Director Charles Jones said only four transgender individuals had enrolled before a class was formed specifically for them.
These are people "who feel like they cannot be a part of" society, Jones said.
Project Empowerment runs its job skills training courses on three-week cycles and helps roughly 1,000 D.C. residents per year, according to Jones. The city's first transgender-only class enrolled in mid-September and graduated 17 people last Friday. Project Empowerment had budgeted about $147,000 for the transgender class, which includes a $8.25-per-hour wage for some graduates' jobs for up to six months. The employers pay nothing.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/2011/10/transgender-job-training-program-fast-tracked-after-attacks#ixzz1aq7lY8vM