What's Happening?
Education Design Lab, in collaboration with Credential Engine and supported by Walmart, has announced the selection of 10 organizations to receive funding through the Advancing Workforce Mobility initiative. This initiative aims to improve the visibility,
trust, and transferability of workers' skills and credentials across education and workforce systems. The selected organizations include nonprofits and governmental bodies focused on making skills more visible and connected to career opportunities. The initiative received over 400 applications, highlighting the demand for solutions that enhance how skills and credentials are recognized and utilized.
Why It's Important?
The initiative addresses the challenges faced by over 70 million working adults in the U.S. who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs). These individuals have developed valuable skills through non-traditional means such as community college, military service, and work experience, yet often struggle to have these skills recognized and translated across systems. By supporting scalable solutions that improve credential transparency and strengthen quality signals, the initiative aims to facilitate economic mobility and open new pathways to opportunity for STARs. This effort is crucial in building a more inclusive and skills-based labor market.
What's Next?
Over the next 18 months, the grantees will design, test, and scale solutions that make skills visible, build employer trust in non-degree credentials, and connect credential data across systems using open standards. The projects will contribute to a broader ecosystem vision where skills and credentials can be more easily compared, trusted, and applied across systems. The initiative focuses on collective learning and ecosystem impact, aiming to test common infrastructure across diverse contexts and generate evidence and models for the field.
Beyond the Headlines
The initiative's focus on collective learning and ecosystem impact is a defining feature. By investing in diverse approaches, populations, and geographies, the initiative aims to test whether common infrastructure can work across different contexts, generating evidence and models the field can build on. This approach supports STARs who are veterans, justice-impacted individuals, immigrant workers, indigenous community members, rural workers, and mobile crisis responders, contributing to a more transparent and connected skills ecosystem.
