Capturing the Big Ideas to Create More Jobs

In 2010, the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, brought togeth­er more than a dozen lead­ing experts from var­i­ous fields and chal­lenged them to devel­op inno­v­a­tive ideas for short-term job cre­ation. The W.K. Kel­logg Foun­da­tion lat­er came on board and the project, now known as Big Ideas for Jobs, released its first round of ideas at a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., forum in Novem­ber 2011.

But project lead­ers Bob Giloth, a Casey vice pres­i­dent, and Karen Chap­ple, a Berke­ley pro­fes­sor, want­ed to go fur­ther and tap into promis­ing ideas that were already being imple­ment­ed at the local lev­el. Com­mu­ni­ties and gov­ern­ments across the coun­try have been feel­ing the effects of job loss­es and are try­ing a vari­ety of cre­ative approach­es to get peo­ple back to work.

The Big Ideas for Jobs web­site launched as a por­tal where elect­ed offi­cials, as well as busi­ness and local lead­ers, can learn from one anoth­er, dis­cov­er new ideas and devel­op a com­mu­ni­ty where every­one can high­light what’s work­ing. The site’s State and Local Gov­ern­ment sec­tion, for exam­ple, fea­tures job-cre­ation pro­pos­als from gov­er­nors and may­ors. The Com­mu­ni­ty and Busi­ness sec­tion high­lights what local busi­ness­es are doing to help the econ­o­my. And you can join the con­ver­sa­tion, too, by shar­ing your community’s suc­cess­ful job-cre­ation strate­gies or becom­ing a guest blogger.

The site has three main sections:

• The orig­i­nal Big Ideas for Jobs section
• Job-cre­ation ideas from state and local governments
• Job-cre­ation ideas from communities

As the econ­o­my changes and the needs of our work­force evolve, this web­site serves to jump-start a mean­ing­ful nation­al con­ver­sa­tion on sound solu­tions to job cre­ation. Big Ideas for Jobs released a new round of ideas from experts ear­li­er this year and hopes these pro­pos­als will spur more inno­va­tion to con­nect peo­ple to jobs.

To learn more about Big Ideas for Jobs, con­tact Taman­na Mansury.