Strengthening Evidence-Based Workforce Training | The AIR Opportunity Fund
As career opportunities evolve, access to timely and effective workforce training is essential for building pathways to economic mobility and prosperity.
To prepare people and communities for the jobs of the future, the AIR Opportunity Fund invests in projects focused on ensuring jobseekers can build skills quickly and become lifelong learners.
We support efforts to reduce barriers to workforce training, strengthen workforce systems, and scale promising strategies from place-based, sector-specific workforce development programs. In addition to research, grantee projects include developing and disseminating resources and toolkits to support workforce initiatives and piloting innovative programs to ensure their effectiveness and scalability.
By collaborating with local organizations and partners, we ensure that economic investments benefit communities and support a future-ready workforce, so that no one is left behind as the economy evolves.
Funding Focus Areas
Rapid Skill Transfer & Lifelong Learning
- Inclusive and robust job skills training
- Testing what works for different populations
- Long-term learning supports
Economic Mobility & Prosperity
- Reducing barriers to workforce training
- Creating career pathways for underserved populations
- Strengthening workforce systems
- Aligning economic investments with community needs
Project Highlights
Piloting Intelligent Tutoring Systems to Enhance Sectoral Training Programs
Based on decades of research on expert human tutoring and artificial intelligence (AI) in computer-based training systems, AIR, Per Scholas, and University of Memphis are exploring intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive computer-based learning environments, as a mechanism for helping sectoral training programs improve outcomes for learners. The resulting brief details key findings, lessons learned, next steps, and conclusions.
Building a More Holistic and Inclusive Workforce Development System for Boston's Youth
In Boston, as many as 10,000 youth participate in the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) every year at hundreds of businesses, nonprofit organizations, and city departments where they learn valuable and important skills that set them up for future success. This report is the culmination of the Year 1 activities which included extensive data collection, rigorous analyses, and a strategic planning effort that focuses on the City’s summer jobs program and the role it plays in the broader SYEP ecosystem.
Advancing AIR’s Opportunity Fund in Africa: P3 Global Expansion
The AIR Pipeline Partnership Program has partnerships with the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the University of Nairobi that provide education, training, and mentoring for students who are entering social and behavioral science fields. AIR also has growing partnerships with Kenyatta University and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, both in Kenya, to collaborate on research and education.
The PROMISE Center: Promoting Resilience, Opportunity, and Mobility in Support of Equity
PROMISE is focused on identifying the most promising workforce training practices in current research, expanding the scale of effective sectoral programs, and partnering with community colleges and other workforce development organizations to further strengthen, study, and scale effective workforce training practices to reach broader, more diverse communities.
