A St. Paul-based nonprofit that has gained national attention for its work with the state’s immigrant communities has been named one of five winners of the Bush Foundation’s Community Innovation prize.

The $500,000 award to Hmong American Partnership — the largest refugee organization in the state — will be put toward its $12.5 million capital campaign for two new workforce and job training centers in the capital city.

“It’s a really big surprise and big news to us,” said Bao Vang, president and CEO of Hmong American Partnership, or HAP. “It’s something that we’ve had our eyes on. It’s a great honor to have received that recognition and to be able to use that to close the gap on very important training programs.”

HAP owns a bus transportation company and runs more than 40 additional social service and job-training efforts aimed at Hmong, Karen, Burmese, Bhutanese, Somali and other immigrant groups. It will celebrate the grand opening of one of its workforce centers Tuesday on St. Paul’s Plato Boulevard.

“When the state is talking about the labor force shortage, they see that as a crisis,” Vang said. “We see that as an opportunity. In the Hmong community, over 50 percent of the community is under the age of 24. The gap that’s missing is having a labor center that equips our young people with the skills they need to enter the workforce right away.”

The Bush Prize, now in its seventh year, is awarded annually in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota and the 23 Native American nations within the same geography.

The foundation, located in St. Paul, received 81 applications for the unrestricted grant awards, which range in size this year from roughly $350,000 to $500,000 and carry no requirements as how the money must be spent.

This year’s winners, chosen with the help of three community members from each state, are the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center of Minneapolis, the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance of Backus, Minn., the Valley City-Barnes County Development Corporation of North Dakota, and the Wokini Initiative of South Dakota State University.

The Bush Foundation, which was established in 1953 by 3M executive Archibald Bush and his wife Edyth, aims to “support creative problem-solving — within and across sectors — to make the region better for everyone,” according to its marketing materials.

Mandy Ellerton, Community Innovation director with the Bush Foundation, said in a written statement that this year’s winners “shake loose solutions to seemingly intractable problems by opening themselves up to surprising partnerships, sharing ownership and bringing together people who don’t always agree. This method of working takes guts, and our region is better because of their courage.”

NEW WORKFORCE CENTER NEXT TO HIGH SCHOOL

Founded in 1990 as a refugee resettlement organization, Hmong American Partnership, or HAP, has grown to offer a number of services, from a school bus fleet and micro-lending business programs to leadership over the transformation of a St. Paul charter school targeted to Hmong youth.

It has recently expanded its footprint in workforce development and health and wellness outreach.

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday will celebrate the grand opening of the newly-renovated HAP Academy OIC Employment Training Center at 240 Plato Boulevard East in St. Paul. A second site at 150 Sycamore St. in St. Paul’s North End will open toward the end of the year.

Between them, the centers will offer training and certifications in the fields of customer service, education, healthcare, human services, information technology, financial services, manufacturing and transportation.

HAP, an official affiliate of the OIC job-training network, offers trainings in English, Hmong, Karen and Karenni.

The Plato Boulevard site is also home to the high school component of a K-12 charter school targeted to Hmong youth and managed by HAP, the Community School of Excellence (CSE), as well as HAP’s Hmoob Toj Siab Children’s House, the first Hmong Montessori Preschool for children ages 33 months to 6 years. Related Articles Otto Bremer Trust case returns to court on Wednesday

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While vocational schools have been criticized by some education advocates over the years, others see easy access to job training as a long-overdue component of public schooling, especially for low-income communities of color that have struggled to break into information technology and other fields heavy on certifications and credentials.

Vang said having a workforce center co-located with a charter school will be a valuable resource, “particularly for high school students who don’t see a four-year education being in their immediate career path, and community members who may not have the opportunity to train with a cultural and linguistically-appropriate instructor in their language.”

The set-up is modeled after IBM’s nationwide P-TECH school model, which creates a “seamless” six-year program to ensure students can attain post-secondary degrees and certifications in information technology and other industries, according to HAP materials.

The Minnesota Legislature passed P-TECH provisions into law last year.

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation of Minnesota recently awarded HAP $100,000 to support family and individual outreach and enrollment in state health care coverage.