One of nine workforce development programs evaluated under the Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE), the Valley Initiative for Development and Advancement (VIDA) was selected as one of the most effective programs as measured by retention, graduation and employment. Findings from the study were revealed at South Texas College's Pecan Campus and celebrated by Senator Juan 'Chuy' Hinojosa and leaders from VIDA and Valley Interfaith. The study was a blind study -- essentially comparing what happened to 500 students who enrolled in VIDA and 500 students who enrolled in other programs.

Fighting a four-front battle to better invest local public funds, Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith (NCLI) leaders recently persuaded the Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator to become the first local official in state history to use the newly-granted local authority to reject an industrial tax exemption request.

This month, three more local entities (Caddo Parish, the City of Shreveport, and the Caddo Parish School Board) will vote on multi-million dollar tax exemption requests, one application at a time.

Leaders of Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith (NCLI) hosted a press conference urging Caddo Economic Development not to grant Inferno Manufacturing a tax exemption for work already completed. Citing research by Blackwell Associates Law Firm indicating that granting tax subsidies for work completed violates the state constitution, Interfaith leaders testified that citizens should not be asked to pay for Inferno's already purchased equipment.

Industrial Tax Break Info to be Posted Online, Edwards Says, US News & World Report

After the Ascension Parish Council secretly voted to approve $55 million in tax exemptions, Ascension Parish residents associated with Together Louisiana filed a lawsuit over the Council's secrecy as they conducted the vote. Their approval of industrial tax exemptions would cost Ascension tax-payers $55 million over the next eight years.

Months after 750 COPS / Metro leaders challenged candidates for San Antonio City Council and the Bexar County Commissioners' Court to support their living wage agenda in a nonpartisan accountability assembly -- and then delivered 8,555 voters to the polls in support of their agenda -- both Bexar County and the City of San Antonio increased entry wages to $14.25 per hour.

One week before the San Antonio City Council votes on the municipal budget, COPS / Metro leaders descended on City Hall to call for increased funding for long-term workforce development program Project Quest. Increasing the city's investment in Quest from $2.2 Million to $ 2.5 Million would enable the program to train an additional 100 residents for new jobs.

Since the establishment of the JET Fund in 2009, Texas has invested in nonprofit labor market intermediaries across the state that helped 800+ low-income, nontraditional community college students navigate their way through community college.

The Adult Career Education (ACE) Grant program, the effort's most recent permutation, now faces an uncertain future. In efforts to slash the state budget, Texas legislators are moving to eliminate all "special item" expenditures, including those that pay for special programs at colleges, over and beyond the normal higher education funding formulas.

When Jacob Mireles returned home from deployment in Afghanistan and Kuwait last year, he quickly applied to Project QUEST for Rackspace's Open Cloud Academy cyber security track in Information Technology. During the training he ran into financial issues and Project QUEST assisted with a portion of the mortgage and utilities. He went on to successfully complete the program and soon after graduation, was hired by IP Secure where he now works as a Security Control Assessor, testing risks attributable to software and hardware systems.

Says Together Baton Rouge (part of the Together Louisiana network): "These reforms haven't gone far enough yet, but what has changed already on Louisiana's biggest corporate subsidy program is historic.