What is INSPIRE 7 Rivers?
The Inspire 7 Rivers initiative aims to help students and job seekers achieve goals by facilitating career exploration with real professionals. We address the community’s workforce development needs by providing employers with ways to connect with their future workforce at a young age. Employers and educators across the nation are exploring new approaches to ensure the next generation is career, college and community-ready. The Inspire 7 Rivers initiative links education and industry to help students and job seekers achieve their goals and address workforce development needs.
The Inspire 7 Rivers platform is a safe way for students to connect with potential employers and career coaches. Inspire 7 Rivers is launched in school districts within Black River Falls, Holmen, Tomah, Hillsboro, and Blair-Taylor, and now has over 114 employers and 97 coaches who are collaborating with over 1,000 active students. Over the next three years, the program will expand to include school districts throughout the entire 7 Rivers Region.
Why INSPIRE?
Through an online network of these organizations, Inspire enhances the Xello software system selected by Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction to help Wisconsin schools fulfill the requirements of Academic and Career Planning (ACP) mandated by the state.
This enhancement brings real-time information on local employers and industries into the ACP equation. It enables employers to connect with educators, students and their parents, to inform them about careers through company profiles, and the online career-coaching. Inspire is free of charge to all schools and educational centers throughout the region that have a Xello license.
Participation by businesses – in all industries, with all types of jobs throughout the region – is critical to the success of Inspire 7 Rivers for both businesses and students!
“La Crosse Area Society for Human Resource Management (LASHRM) endorses two regional efforts in Workforce Innovation; the 7 Rivers Inspire project – an important school and business career development tool and WISE (Workforce Innovation for a Strong Economy)- a regional 10 year workforce development plan . We strongly believe that these efforts effectively pull together community based resources in a collaborative fashion to support the long range job and career needs of our local residents and families and provide for a dependable, productive future workforce for the businesses we represent. We encourage our members to participate actively in both programs.”
Check out Xello Wisconsin for more information.
Watch this video to see how the student career interaction is developed.
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Get Involved By:
- Businesses/Employers
- Once signed up, employers can engage with students and job seekers through discussion boards, offering activities such as job shadows and internships, and send targeted messages about opportunities for those who might be most interested.
- Career Coaches
- Coaches are available to answer questions from students in our community who want to learn more about a certain industry or career.
Click here to register your business or sign up to become a career coach!
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Have questions? Want to learn more?
Contact Chris Hardie at chris@7riversalliance.org or reach out to our Inspire team at inspire7riversalliance@gmail.com.