PRESIDIO — Last Thursday, city leaders and regional representatives toasted the opening of a new Workforce Solutions Borderplex (WSB) office in Presidio. The agency had previously been operating out of a portable at the Presidio ISD administration complex, but the new office is just steps from City Hall. “WSB has had a presence in Presidio for many years, but we are eager to move to a location that provides more visible and better access to the area’s residents,” CEO Leila Melendez wrote in a press release.
WSB is one of 28 workforce development boards in the state of Texas, serving El Paso and surrounding rural counties. The organization runs on a blend of state and federal grants and private stakeholders to help locals find employment and develop critical skills. “Our job is to empower individuals, employers, and our community with the tools, opportunities and resources to go back for school or training and to overcome any barriers to employment,” WSB Communications Director Kandolite Carson explained.
That empowerment can take on a lot of different forms: by helping servicemembers transition to civilian jobs, finding childcare for a stressed working parent or providing funding for cash-strapped small businesses to train their employees. A partnership with Microsoft has given WSB the resources to help struggling businesses get online and connect with the wider world. “It’s a grand scale of work from individuals all the way through employers, and all of it is at no cost,” Carson said.
Childcare is a major concern for working parents in the Big Bend, where very few licensed providers operate. In collaboration with the Rio Grande Council of Governments, WSB is working on a two-pronged project to help parents and combat unemployment: offering help with training, licensing and insuring home daycare services that benefit both families and caregivers. The program will also assist daycare operators with providing nutritious food and educational resources, in the hopes of helping kids get ready for kindergarten. “It’s not just babysitting — it’s early childhood education and investment,” Carson said.
The goal of the new downtown office is to make the agency’s services more accessible and visible to the general public. Carson stressed that anyone can stop by and see if WSB can help them meet their goals. “It could be anybody: it could be someone who’s retired and wants to reenter the workforce, it could be a teenager who is looking for career pathways or career readiness and internship,” she said. “It could be a single parent, it could be an employer, or even an entrepreneur who’s looking to create a business.”
Presidio’s new WSB location can be found at 505-B West O’Reilly Street, and is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 432-837-9800.