Texas Border Business
The Moody Foundation recently awarded Valley Initiative for Development and Advancement (VIDA) a grant of $125,000. The grant aims to assist VIDA in providing job retraining and education that will address job loss in the Rio Grande Valley due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Frances Moody-Dahlberg, chairman and executive director of The Moody Foundation and great granddaughter of its founders, “The Moody Foundation’s Galvestonian founders weathered many storms. It was those storms that forged their dreams of a better Texas. They created the Moody Foundation to strengthen the future of Texas. We will continue to honor our founders’ vision to build a brighter tomorrow by addressing the unprecedented challenges we face today.”
“The founders of VIDA had a similar vision 25 years ago,” said Priscilla Dinn Alvarez, executive director of VIDA. “VIDA was founded on the desire to empower underserved residents of our region with the tools, education, and training needed to become self-sufficient while fueling the growth of existing employers and increasing recruitment of new investment to the area.”
VIDA provides financial assistance, as well as college and career counseling, to unemployed and underemployed residents of the Rio Grande Valley, focusing on the high-demand areas of allied health, manufacturing, technology, business, education and social services, STEM, and specialized trades. VIDA’s wrap-around services give adult students the resources, support, and counseling they need to overcome obstacles that have placed them in poverty. This pandemic has been an overwhelming obstacle for many.
“Across the country and right here in the Rio Grande Valley,” said Alvarez, “countless jobs have been lost as a direct result of COVID-19. This grant from the Moody Foundation allows us to provide hope to those who would likely otherwise remain unemployed, underemployed, and feeling hopeless.”
Education and training are the key to success for individuals and for our community’s economic stability and growth. VIDA depends on the support of invaluable partners like the Moody Foundation.
To learn more about VIDA, visit vidacareers.org.
VIDA is a community- based, nonprofit 501(c)(3) agency created in 1995 through a local effort led by community leaders of Valley Interfaith and private-industry leaders. The impetus was the need to empower the underserved residents of our region with the tools, education, and training needed to become self-sufficient while fueling the growth of existing employers and recruiting new investors to the area by developing a highly skilled workforce. Since its inception, VIDA’s mission remains constant–to formulate new institutional relationships in the Rio Grande Valley that simultaneously address employers’ needs for skilled workers and link the area’s unemployed and underemployed with high skilled, high-wage jobs in the region. To learn more about VIDA, call 956.903.1900 or 1.800.478.1770 or visit vidacareers.org.
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