Tribal Workforce Development: A Decision-Framing Toolkit

“A nation-building checklist for tribal workforce development”

NCAI's Tribal Workforce Development Toolkit: An Overview (video)

NCAI Breakout Session: A Nation-Building Toolkit for Tribal Workforce Development (video)

This toolkit shares the main findings of NCAI’s multi-year research project examining the innovative approaches to workforce development that tribal nations along with Native organizations and tribal colleges and universities are forging, how they are achieving success (as they define it), and why. Titled “Building the Human Capacity to Rebuild Tribal Nations,” the project seeks to answer the following questions (among others): How are tribal nations working to create reliable, sustainable career – not just job – opportunities for tribal citizens that directly advance the long-term goals of the nations to which those citizens belong? How are they investing in and preparing tribal citizens to succeed in particular careers that their nations need, and how are they creating pathways for those citizens to provide their nations meaningful returns on that investment?

The toolkit is designed for tribal leaders, workforce development practitioners, and other key decision-makers tasked with tackling the daunting and complex task of evaluating, refining, expanding, and in some cases, completely overhauling the workforce development approaches for which they are responsible. It frames and informs strategic decision making by tribal policy makers at a foundational, nation-rebuilding level by providing them a comprehensive lens through which they can identify, develop, and implement effective, sustainable workforce development solutions tailored to their distinct needs and ends.

TRIBAL WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT: A DECISION-FRAMING TOOLKIT

PTG's Tribal Workforce Development Research Project

15 STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS OF TRIBAL WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Tribal decision-makers can use the entire toolkit to send their strategic deliberations about how best to develop or strengthen comprehensive approaches to workforce development (see link above). Or they can select, "pull out," print, and use specfic strategic considerations from among the 15 featured in the toolkit. Links to the individual pullouts are below.

Individual pullout PDFs:

TRIBAL INNOVATION SNAPSHOTS

Each strategic consideration features two summaries (or “snapshots”) of leading examples of innovative solutions to tribal workforce development challenges that directly address the strategic consideration in question. Each snapshot includes Learning Link and Connect features for toolkit users to learn more information about the solutions.

Tribal Innovation Snapshots — Learning Links:

THE TOOLKIT: OTHER KEY COMPONENTS

Tribal Workforce Development: An Introduction

Tribal Workforce Development: Glossary and Acronyms

The Challenges Facing Indian Country Workforce Development (Unabridged Version)

Toolkit Endnotes and Research Citations