On April 6, 2004, an alert was posted concerning two U.S. Department of Labor solicitations for grant applications for both relatively small "Grassroots" grants to link FBCOs (Faith-Based and Community Organizations) with the workforce One-Stop system, and larger grants to Regional Workforce Boards for outreach/partnering with FBCOs, through intermediaries, subgrants, etc. [for details, go to http://www.dol.gov/cfbci/funding.htm]. Also note that USDOL site features Florida’s Brevard United Way/Workforce/FBOs Intermediaries project as a national Best Practice, that was funded in the initial 2002 Intermediaries Grant Competition.

As noted in the alertand the underlying grant solicitation, the second competition for Workforce Boards this time requires proposals to "Identify specific census tract(s) {neighborhoods} with high unemployment rates and current and potential FBCO resources in those neighborhoods (resource map) to help hard-to-serve individuals prepared for and sustain employment." In order to help you to focus on the targeted neighborhoods, we are forwarding information assembled, analyzed and provided by the Labor Market Services (LMS) Office of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI).

Below are links to two files with the unemployment rates for all the Census tracts in Florida from the 2000 Census. One file has the tracts ranked from highest to lowest within county and the other has all the tracts in the state ranked from highest to lowest. Please keep in mind that there are problems with the Census Bureau’s unemployment estimates in areas with significant populations living in group quarters (e.g. university dormitories) that affects these numbers. Some of the tracts with the highest unemployment rates in the state are in university or other group quarters areas, but these are probably not the areas you would want to target for these services.

Unemployment rates for all the Cencus tracts in Florida, by county (pdf)
Unemployment rates for all the Cencus tracts in Florida (pdf)

Since the cutoff for "high unemployment" has not been defined by USDOL for this grant application process, here are a couple of suggestions based on how "high unemployment" is defined for other federal grants, but we note that you can choose whatever criterion that seems most applicable to your area, particularly when combined with the need to show current and potential FBCO resource in the same neighborhoods, and only you and your local partners can provide that "resource map.":

*Areas where the unemployment rate was higher than 150 percent of the national average for a comparable time period. This definition would mean any tracts with an unemployment rate higher than 8.7 percent would qualify (of the 3,149 tracts in the state, 497 meet this qualification).

*Areas where the unemployment rate was higher than 120 percent of the national average. Tracts over 7.0 percent would qualify (769 tracts meet this qualification).

*Areas where the unemployment rate was 10.0 percent or higher (369 meet this qualification).

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And in order for you to see where the census tracts are located in you r communities, follow the following instructions to use the Bureau of Census’ directory for census tract maps of every county.

Instructions to display locate on a map a Census Tract:

Click on:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/RMGeoSearchByListServlet?_lang=en

Select a geographic type:

Census Tract
Select a state: Florida
Select a county: select a county of interest
Select a geographic area and click 'Show Result': highlight the tract of interest
Click: Show Result

A map will open in a new window that displays the Census Tract in the County that you selected. From that or any GIS info already available locally, you should also be able to identify FBCO resources available in the targeted tract(s).

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As a final bit of information, USDOL has established a subsite with some Questions and Answers about grant competitions and other opportunities offered to FBCOs, at http://www.doleta.gov/usworkforce/documents/misc/fbo-cbo.cfm Right now the posted Q/As refer to prior competitions in 2002, but are expected to be updated soon to address the 2 just announced for 2004. Other Labor-related information is also accessible through that site.

For Florida-specific information on FBCO/workforce related information, go to the "CBO-FBO Gateway" maintained by Workforce Florida, Inc. at http://www.workforceflorida.com/gateway/. Among other things, it offers a running collection of grant alerts and resources such as this message, and the full text of the winning Intermediaries Grant submitted by the Brevard partners in 2002.