PEORIA, Ill. – The future of a job training program for young adults in Peoria is up in the air after funding to it was on the chopping block.
Funding for PeoriaCorps is up in the air after the Trump administration announced it was canceling grants to its parent organization, AmeriCorps. The cuts also affect the state-wide program, Serve Illinois.
PeoriaCorps provides an apprenticeship program for adults aged 18-24 and helps them build job skills, people skills, and leadership development through training and job shadowing. The program in Peoria has a focus on green infrastructure, via planting trees and picking up litter.
Because of that, the city’s Stacy Peterson tells WMBD’s “The Phil Luciano Show” that it relieves some of the duties of the Public Works Department.
“Our Public Works Department has to maintain streets and potholes and cut grass and deal with big infrastructure projects, and if we’ve got a group of people where we can use a training mechanism that also helps another department, that’s also a cost-saving measure for our public,” Peterson said.
Peterson says the graduates don’t have to stay in green infrastructure, citing one person who ended up in the fire department.
The most recent class graduated this past Friday. Peterson says those currently in the program were told to stay home while the program is in limbo, per order by the federal government.
Peterson says a portion of the funding for the program comes from the Edwards Coal-Fired Plant settlement. She says the program’s director is looking at ways to use the settlement money to keep PeoriaCorps going, which only lasts for a couple more weeks.
In the meantime, Peterson says a proposal is planned to come before the city council at the May 13th meeting to fund PeoriaCorps through August, when the current class graduates.
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