Founded in 1978, Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) is dedicated to helping unemployed and underemployed women gain economic self-sufficiency through nontraditional jobs (defined as those in which 75% or more of the workers are male) in the building and construction trades. Such jobs usually pay twice the rate of those in many of the sectors historically dominated by female workers (e.g., a home healthcare assistant may earn $20,000/year while a construction worker may earn $50,000+/year with benefits). Nationally, only an estimated 2% of construction and other skilled blue-collar jobs are held by women.

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NEW is working to improve women’s participation rates in these jobs in New York City.  Nontraditional vocations include jobs as utility workers, service technicians, installers, truck drivers, mechanics, building maintenance workers, and carpenters.  NEW currently offers two training programs, Blue Collar Prep and NEW at Night, both of which combine skills training and job-readiness instruction.  Blue Collar Prep (BCP), NEW’s core course running full-time, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., for six weeks, provides basic skills in trades, on-the-job health and safety instruction, math, physical fitness, and job-readiness instruction.  NEW at Night is an accelerated 6-week, evening and Saturday program, which enables NEW to target underemployed women who may already have some blue-collar, military, or technical experience.  With a strong set of relationships with unions across New York City and a wide range of employer partners, NEW placed more than 200 women in jobs with 17 unions and with at least 18 different employers in FY09.  NEW also reports solid job retention for its placed clients and works with women to make sure they have the skills not only to obtain, but also to keep, well-paying jobs.  For 2010, NEW also plans to enroll 100 women in the newly created ReNEW program, which keeps the BCP structure but focuses on green jobs, such as weatherization. 

Since 2007, NEW has been led by Amy Peterson, an engineer by trade who has construction, government, and nonprofit work experience.  Amy and her board have done an impressive job of managing the organization during the downturn and have articulated a strategy to move forward to ongoing self-sufficiency through a combination of public contracts and increased individual, corporate, and foundation giving.

Tiger Foundation has been supporting NEW since 1993.  To learn more about this organization, please visit their web site at http://www.new-nyc.org or contact Amy Peterson at (212) 627-6252, or by e-mail at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). 

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