T A L E N T
In order to boost the success of the Greater Oklahoma City region’s businesses, the Chamber is actively engaged in strengthening the workforce pipeline, beginning with Greater Oklahoma City’s students all the way through recruiting middle skill employees. BOOST ING STUDENT OUTCOMES The Chamber continued to invest in the success of the Oklahoma City Public Schools District through the Oklahoma City Schools Compact, which is made up of the Chamber, the Foundation for Oklahoma City Public Schools, Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS), the United Way of Central Oklahoma, and the City of Oklahoma City. Since 2015, the Compact has supported the district by tackling specific challenges through evidence-based programing. In 2019, the Compact continued to focus on the district’s overall literacy through the work of the Read OKC task force. Through its reading programs, students participated in five reading challenges during their spring, summer, fall, Thanksgiving and winter breaks, thereby preventing the brain drain that takes place when students are not in school. The 2019 Read OKC reading challenges resulted in 20,322 participants completing a total of 8 million reading minutes; 14,748 of those participants made their goal of reading at least 20 minutes daily each day of the break. In addition to the reading programs, Read OKC also coordinated
the construction and operation of 40 Little Free Libraries and had more than 500 reading buddies volunteering their time in the Oklahoma City Public School District. The Compact also continued its important work to provide valuable mental and behavioral health resources to the Oklahoma City Public School District through the Embrace OKC initiative. In the fall of 2018, the work of Embrace OKC allowed the district to use data to create a playbook of evidence-based programs and services that the district can use to improve mental health outcomes. In 2019, the school district was able to use the Embrace OKC framework in its Pathways to Greatness initiative to make sure each school had a counselor on the premises. The Embrace OKC committee also worked diligently to raise the funds needed to fully implement the entire program in the district. WE LCOMING NEW RES I DENTS The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber completely reevaluated its relocation resources to make sure that the program continues to meet the needs of individuals moving to Oklahoma City and companies who are relocating or recruiting employees to the region. In 2019, the Chamber relaunched ABetterLifeOKC. com, its relocation and talent-attraction website. The new look and features are aimed specifically at talent attraction and will help regional companies recruit
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2 0 1 9 A N N U A L R E P O R T / G R E A T E R O K L A H O M A C I T Y C H A M B E R
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