Job losses, high gas prices, consumer cutbacks, housing foreclosures: this is a tough time in the U.S. economy. With unemployment rising, workers need solid language and job skills to compete, but federal job training funds are evaporating. The Fry Foundation has responded by nearly tripling funding for adult education and job training programs in the last two years—including one innovative program for immigrants and refugees that combines both.

People who walk through the doors of Chicago's Heartland Human Care Services reflect political and economic unrest around the globe: refugees from Burma, Burundi, Uzbekistan, and Iraq, immigrants from Africa and Central and South America. Heartland has been helping such people adapt to the American labor market since 1981. In an increasingly tough economy, newcomers encounter all the problems that other entry-level job seekers face and then some. Experience, credentials, and connections from their home country mean little to American employers; and language barriers make it hard for them to function in an American workplace.

To overcome these barriers, the Fry Foundation is funding Heartland to offer an innovative program that combines English classes, job readiness training, and placement services in three industries that have strong job prospects: restaurant work, landscaping, and hospitality. The program offers ten courses a year, from six to eighteen weeks in length depending on the sector. The curriculum includes English instruction that features information on workplace culture, job expectations, and basic math and interviewing skills. Also included are skills and language specific to the industry. Take restaurant work, for example: a cook from Baghdad may make a mean kouba or taghrib, but needs a whole new vocabulary to follow American recipes, identify utensils and measurements, and read English labels on ingredients.

Key to the program are partnerships with local employers who understand both the needs and the opportunities presented by employing immigrants, says Shana Wills, Heartland's Director of Refugee and Immigrant Community Services. Cooperating employers include landscapers, greenhouses, and major hotels as well as a restaurant operated by Inspiration Corporation, another Fry Foundation grantee. The firms open their facilities for daylong internships, where the trainees shadow workers doing the jobs they aspire to—and often build a connection that turns into a job offer. Another partner is the University of Illinois Extension, which provides horticultural training. Many immigrants and refugees come from farming backgrounds, but they need new language skills and exposure to a whole new array of plants and products they may never have seen before.

Heartland works hard to keep adapting the programs to meet the specific needs of both participants and employers. A common struggle is time. Refugees get short-term public assistance immediately on arrival in the United States and are generally desperate to get a job before it runs out. Immigrants typically have families to support. Employers, on the other hand, are counting on the programs to deliver specific skills in order to guarantee that employees have the knowledge they need to do a good job. It is a constant balancing act, says Wills. Still, she says, the program works because it offers a win-win situation for both sides.

"These employers need entry-level employees," she says. "And refugees and immigrants need the jobs. Refugees and immigrants tend to be very stable employees. So employers are getting committed employees, people who are willing to learn and to move up the ladder. That means they don't have to spend a lot of money hiring and rehiring people."

The figures back that up: Heartland's job placement and retention rates exceed 70 percent. The agency is not resting on its laurels: this year it is offering professional development to improve instructors' teaching practices and their ability to assess the language progress of their students. Meanwhile, Heartland keeps investigating ways to connect with sectors that offer wages and benefits sufficient to support a family, and is looking for new employers to partner with. Employers who have been through the program and are pleased with the results are often the best ambassadors. Says Wills: "Our job is to educate and influence the employers we work with, let them exchange stories about the benefits of employing our people, and get them to influence others." At the same time Heartland follows up with trainees to make sure they are adjusting to American workplace culture. The goal is to make sure the program remains a "win-win" for both workers and employers.