Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology will receive a $112,500 grant from the PNC Foundation to increase access to educational services for unemployed or underemployed low-income people of color.
The foundation announced this week that it would award the grant to expand education and training opportunities within the college’s Workforce and Economic Development Center – specifically up to 14 low-income people of color who may enroll in the program over the next three years.
Funding helps to eliminate barriers outside of tuition that might prohibit a low-income student from completing their education. In an essay describing the benefits of the PNC grant, the college’s president Pedro Rivera wrote money will go toward transportation, food, work-safe clothing and childcare.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities that PNC has created and will continue to create for our students and their families, and I’m inspired by the ways in which this funding will impact and positively change lives in our community for years to come,” Rivera wrote in the essay.
Assisting students in completing training through the Workforce and Economic Development Center prepares them for entry-level positions in “high priority” occupations in Lancaster County like welding and building trades, according to Rivera’s essay.
Rivera wrote that the grant “will also help create lifelong economic prosperity as our students accept family-sustaining jobs, purchase homes, build wealth, and contribute to our collective community.”
Lancaster County’s poverty rate from 2016-2020 was 9.1%, making it the 12th least-impoverished of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. And, Rivera said, low-income students are more likely to drop out of high school and less likely to graduate on time.
“We must collectively work as a community to change these devastating statistics,” Rivera wrote.
Gloss