Community leaders, residents, and elected officials gathered on Tuesday in Stowe Township to celebrate the opening of a new resource.<\/p>\n
It’s located at the Pleasant Ridge Apartment Complex, and leaders hope it will serve as a hub for career services.<\/p>\n
The excitement comes as the McKees Rocks Opportunity Center opens. Goodwill and the Allegheny County Housing Authority are behind it.<\/p>\n
“This is an exciting day,” Monique McIntosh, president and CEO of Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania, said. “I think this is a testament to the power of collaboration.”<\/p>\n
Goodwill says the center will provide things like workforce development services, job training, career coaching, and resource referral.<\/p>\n
“It gives individuals and communities opportunity for economic mobility, advancement,” McIntosh said.<\/p>\n
It will also serve as a community hub for information.<\/p>\n
“One of the focuses is letting the residents know what the requirements are to maintain your SNAP benefits, to maintain your Medicaid benefits,” Richard Stevenson, the executive director of the Allegheny County Housing Authority, said.<\/p>\n
Stevenson said that could be important.<\/p>\n
“I do believe from what I’m hearing, there are going to be working requirements similar to work requirements with SNAP benefits,” he said.<\/p>\n
Part of the goals here also includes eliminating transportation barriers.<\/p>\n
“It’s key that we bring services to the community so that they can access them,” McIntosh said.<\/p>\n
Goodwill and the Allegheny County Housing Authority have been working together in recent months to develop this.<\/p>\n
They thought the Stowe Township-McKees Rocks area was the right location for what they were unveiling.<\/p>\n
“McKees Rocks actually has the highest portion of public housing and Section 8 residents in its community,” Stevenson said.<\/p>\n
They want to break the chains of generational poverty.<\/p>\n
“This opportunity center is a hub, in my opinion, for hope,” McIntosh said.<\/p>\n
This opportunity center joins the ones in Morgantown, West Virginia, Pittsburgh’s North Side, Lawrenceville, and Pittsburgh’s South Side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Community leaders, residents, and elected officials gathered on Tuesday in Stowe Township to celebrate the opening of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[894,3313,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-allegheny-county","tag-mckees-rocks","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}