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NYCHA Now
December 2023 Highlighted NYCHA Partners 

NYCHA REES and City Tech Win CEANY’s Outstanding Business Collaboration Award for 2023

Joshua Olesker

NYCHA’s Office of Resident Economic Empowerment & Sustainability (REES) and the New York City College of Technology were honored together on November 9 by the Continuing Education Association of New York (CEANY), which awarded the partnership their James C. Hall Program Outstanding Business/Organization Collaboration award for 2023 in recognition of the continuing success of the NYCHA Resident Training Academy (NRTA), which is funded by the Robin Hood Foundation.

The NRTA provides employment-linked training opportunities and job placement assistance to NYCHA residents in the construction, maintenance, and janitorial fields. NYCHA’s REES team works with NRTA graduates to provide job placement assistance in career paths that lead to self-sufficiency. Since the launch of the program in 2010, the NRTA has proudly graduated 3,741 program participants, 89 percent of whom have been placed into jobs with NYCHA as Caretakers, Pest Control Technicians, Emergency Service Aides, City Service Aides, and Maintenance Aides, as well as in various construction-related positions with NYCHA contractors and other affordable housing developers.

The CEANY Awards Committee cited “the exceptional efforts of NYCHA REES and their partner, the New York City College of Technology, in engaging public housing residents in educational programs and industry training,” which, the committee said, “has provided them with direct access to union apprenticeship career opportunities in New York City. CEANY believes that this is a model we can all benefit from.”

Pictured above: Josephine Melendez, Assistant Director of Adult Education and Training, NYCHA-REES, with Shermira Busby, Director, Business and Industry Workforce Training Center, NYC College of Technology.

The 2023 James C. Hall Award was formally accepted by Josephine Melendez, Assistant Director of Adult Education and Training at REES, at an awards ceremony held at CEANY’s 2023 Annual Conference in Monticello, New York.

“On behalf of NYCHA REES and our partner, CUNY’s New York City College of Technology, thank you from the bottom of our hearts,” said Ms. Melendez. “We do our best to make the NRTA program as useful and valuable as it can be, and it is truly wonderful for the program to be recognized this way. We strive to keep the program relevant with up-to-date industry certifications and contextualized education and to increase employment connections every year.”

Also present at the awards ceremony was Shermira Busby, Director of the Business and Industry Workforce Training Center at the NYC College of Technology.

“The NRTA is a longstanding partnership between City Tech and NYCHA REES,” said Ms. Busby. “We are truly delighted with the success NRTA graduates have had, with the rates of placement and retention they have had in the careers they’ve chosen, as well as with the wonderful testimonies about them we keep hearing. This award is a wonderful recognition of a program that we are so proud to support and be a part of.”

Want to learn about the NRTA and the opportunities that come with participation? Visit http://opportunitynycha.org/workforce-development/nycha-resident-train for more information.