Marshall County Tennessee’s MarCo POLO concept is an idea pitched during TVA’s Community Innovation Academy in late 2020, and it’s going live this spring. It stands for Public Online Learning Organization, and while there are several aspects to the program, what stands out for me is the offer to provide job seekers with training in how to become an effective remote workers for local and national companies. As many of us have found out, sometimes it’s not as easy as it looks, especially if you are a brand new employee, so shifting some of that on-boarding and training risk away from the employer is a plus. It’s also a great way to reach disengaged workers who have transportation, caregiving, scheduling, or other hurdles that make on-site work difficult if not impossible. They are starting small, but have high hopes.
Here’s a link to their pitch for the project in a nice storymaps format: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/633bbfd4c5de4e8583ae6ad529605930
And here is a link to a short video and details about the first group in training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM5Oa3OukcQ
There’s more planned in Marshall County, and the TVA Community Innovation Academy heard sever other pitches too – if you want to see some of the other ideas, they are listed here: http://www.lewisburgtnecd.com/2020/10/marshall-county-pitches-remote-worker.html