An innovative welfare-to-work program begun in Cortez has been awarded a $3 million grant by the U.S. Department of Labor to assist welfare recipients in Montezuma, Dolores, and La Plata counties in acquiring the skills needed to find and keep good jobs.

The Project of Self-Empowerment (POSE) coalition, organized and directed by Adult Education Director Ann Miller, will use the grant to provide assistance to adults with disabilities living in the three-county area. San Juan Basin Technical School, one of the POSE coalition members, is the applicant and fiscal agent for the project.

POSE will target families receiving assistance under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) with adult education and vocational training, job development and retention. In addition, participants will have improved access to extended vocation rehabilitation, expanded and accessible transportation and child-care services plus more family-focused support.

Locally, adult education programs will use the money to hire additional instructors and buy vans to improve transportation access for clients among improving other services.

"We have worked for almost four years for this, and resubmitted the applications three different times," Miller said at a celebration ceremony this week. "The cooperation is proof that many different organizations can work together toward the common goal of improving education family support services in high-need rural areas such as this corner of the state. It’s a real model for economic development."

The three-year grant, totaling $3,053,968, operates the program in conjunction with the Southwest Colorado Workforce Board, which developed the "one-stop" career center for this rural region. The creative approach of a consortium involving more than 50 community organizations committed to life-long learning programs and family-support services caught the eye of Labor Department officials and President Clinton.

"The competitive grants encourage communities to build partnerships and be innovative in their approach to helping welfare recipients become employed," said Labor Secretary Alexis Herman in a press release.

Likewise, Clinton said, "We have made great progress reducing welfare caseloads and these grants will mean more American workers will be able to learn the skills and find the jobs they need."

A key component of POSE includes teaching adult education, life skills and job skills simultaneously. It involves providing attitude and pre-job training and offers micro-enterprise development to start or expand individual businesses. Other aspects of the program will work to encourage women with disabilities to enter non-traditional employment and help empower disabled adults. Participants will also have better access to distance learning thanks to the Labor Department grant award.

A $3-million welfare-to-work grant awarded to a coalition group in Southwest Colorado by the Department of Labor was put on hold despite a massive media campaign announcing winning recipients.

A portion of the grant is being challenged by the U.S. Department of Labor, because of conflicting interpretations of what administrative costs can entail. The grant was awarded to a innovative Four Corners consortium of education-based organizations called Project for Self-Empowerment (POSE) last week. Shortly after POSE’s proposal was accepted for funding, the Labor Department challenged whether using grant funds to purchase computers for students here constitutes an education need or administrative cost.

Supporters say a key component in the grant proposal for providing education access to rural areas here is through distance-education technology via computers.

"The computers would only be used by students, not by administrators. We are arguing that distance education is absolutely essential for education in rural America," said Ann Miller, Adult Education director, who organized and spearheaded the collaborative grant-writing project. "If this was a problem, why didn’t they notify us of the difficulty before announcing the grant award to us, and then everyone else through press releases and on the Internet?"