Lifting Up Westchester launches a career center

Lifting Up Westchester (LUW), the White Plains-based social services agency providing life changing support to residents in crisis, has received a two-year, $200,000 charitable grant from KeyBank Foundation to launch a new career center.

According to a press release from LUW, the career center will “take a holistic approach to strengthening people’s stability and self-sufficiency” by offering job readiness and skills training, individual job coaching, and apprenticeships that lead to higher-paying jobs and employment advancement.

With KeyBank’s support, LUW will build out a physical career center, hire staff, establish employment partnerships, and work with the Department of Social Services and other social welfare organizations to build a pipeline to targeted populations. Its focus will be on providing job readiness and skills training, individual job coaching, and apprenticeships that lead to higher-paying jobs and employment advancement.

The program seeks to work with an estimated 175 unemployed and significantly under-employed individuals over KeyBank’s two-year funding period.

“The center will complement the existing employment programs in Westchester County by providing intense job readiness services that address the high barriers people with extremely low-income face every day,” said LUW CEO Anahaita Kotval, adding the organization will “walk hand-in-hand to help individuals get both the employment and the additional support they need for long-term stability.”