The NKyTribune is teaming up with Horizon Community Funds on this occasional series highlighting the work of nonprofits in Northern Kentucky.
By Tess Brown
Horizon Community Funds
“This is where I got my start!”
When you walk through the doors of the Center for Employment Training (CET), operated by Brighton Center in Newport, the energy is palpable.
There is a buzz that fills the air throughout the building. In one room, students listen to a guest speaker talk about her life experience and how to succeed in the workplace. In another, students review notes in preparation for a phlebotomy quiz. A dummy sits in one of the medical assisting training rooms, waiting for trainees to administer hands-on clinical exercises.
The Center for Employment Training meets its trainees where they are in life and offers a debt-free education opportunity. The program has no entry requirements, and training is short-term and intensive. Classes start each week, allowing for rolling admission as candidates are ready to enter the program. Additionally, trainees entering the program without a GED are able to have “dual” enrollment in GED instruction courses and skill training at the same time.
While much of the building is set up as a “traditional” learning space, CET places a priority on hands-on education. Each of the classrooms is equipped to put learning into practice—computers in the business & computer technologies area, functioning medical equipment in the medical assisting program, and plans for a state-of-the-art health technology administration area, which will meet local workforce demand for medical billing and coding professionals.
In fiscal year 2017 alone, the program provided training for 180 individuals who then saw an average wage gain of close to $14,000. As the students leave the program with little to no debt, this gain could eventually be the difference between rental and homeownership, or between a bus pass and a personal vehicle. Many of our neighbors got their start at Brighton Center, and the community as a whole is all the better for it.
Their Facebook page is filled with photos of positive messages shared throughout the center, as well as photos of the many graduates that walk down the hall for the last time as a trainee, surrounded by peers for a “Clap Out”. Be sure to follow CET there, and Brighton Center on Twitter and Facebook. You can learn more about CET’s extensive services and program benefits at http://www.bccet.org/.
