Project QUEST, Inc.

Project QUEST (Quality Employment Through Skills Training), a primary economic development broker, provides critical support, expertise and resources to develop highly qualified employees for in-demand occupations that offer a living wage, benefits and a career path. QUEST’s success is shown in the impressive record of taking people with the most barriers to higher education, getting them into college and training for demand occupations, graduating them with strong academic records, and placing them with local employers, within a few months of their graduation. Since 1992, QUEST has prepared 5,600 adults for local workforce through customized services such as skills assessment, career mapping, personal counseling, academic remediation, financial assistance for college education, workplace training, and job placement. QUEST has a 86% job placement rate for its completers. Participants enter the program making on average $10,000 a year and graduate making an average of $40,000 a year. The long-term impact on the lives of our graduates is a testament to the strength of our model, and evidence of the effectiveness of our program. Equally important is the economic impact for the city. Within the first five years, every $1 put into QUEST has the return on investment of $15 for the community. A number of external studies have reviewed and evaluated the long-term success of programs such as QUEST, including recent studies by The Aspen Institute and the Ray Marshall Center at the University of Texas. The results of these studies inform our process for evaluating program effectiveness. The Generational Impact Study shows the effects of programs such as QUEST on the children of our graduates in more detail. Findings suggest that 90% of participants' children age 18 and over graduated from high school, and 75% have gone on to college.