Victoria Foundation staff joins over a dozen partners to help launch this 2017 initiative.

 Newark has launched a new effort to grow job and business opportunities for residents at firms located within the city. Mayor Baraka announced at his State of the City address that this "Hire, Buy, Live" initiative will bring government, private sector, and nonprofit agencies together to promote ambitious goals for getting a target number of Newark residents access to local employment (2,020 by 2020); increasing procurement contracts for Newark-owned firms (from ~3% to 10% by 2020); and encouraging employees of local firms to make their homes in Newark. The most developed of these three efforts is the "Hire" campaign represented by Newark 2020. Victoria Foundation grantee, NJ Institute for Social Justice, has been a lead architect of this initiative, which is co-led by the Newark Alliance and managed by a steering committee that includes high-level staff from City Hall, Prudential Foundation and key "anchor institutions" such as Rutgers University, Saint

Barnabas, and Audible, and representatives from

community development corporations. (Irene Cooper-Basch sits on the Executive Committee and Program Officer Stephanie Greenwood participates as a steering committee member.) In June, the group announced the launch of a web platform (www.newark2020.com) that will match job-seekers with entry-level opportunities at local firms that have committed to meeting a portion of the 2020 goal. Victoria Foundation recently made an out-of-cycle commitment to this initiative to support a Program Director to help lead and coordinate the initiative.

For news coverage of the launch and for more information visit:

https://www.hirebuylive.com/ and

http://www.njtvonline.org/news/video/newark-sets-goal-2020-jobs-newarkers-2020/.

Written By: Stephanie Greenwood