SEATTLE, Wash. — USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Oct. 29 a Seattle jobs training center will receive USDA grant funds to develop materials and strategies to improve job and skills training for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients nationwide.

The Seattle Jobs Initiative (SJI) will receive a two-year, $3.4 million grant from the Food and Nutrition Service. The grant funds a SNAP Employment and Training Center of Excellence, to support SNAP job training programs nationwide.

John Kim, director of the SJI, said the new center leverages the group’s success at moving SNAP recipients in Seattle toward better, higher-paying jobs. The SJI placed 6,671 low-income individuals in jobs from 1997-2013 through its Basic Food Employment and Training Program, with 76 percent of placements remaining in the job more than three months.

The new center will provide direct technical assistance to other states involved in job training programs aimed at SNAP recipients. The emphasis will be on developing job training that works, "without reinventing wheels," according to Kim.

That includes helping other states understand how they can use available federal funds to develop effective SNAP Employment and Training programs.

U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the House Agriculture Committee, has championed Washington state’s Basic Food and Employment job training programs for SNAP recipients as a model for other states.

This new grant adds to $200 million that she and others successfully included in the 2014 farm bill for job training programs for SNAP recipients. That funded job training programs in 10 states, based on Washington state’s model programs.

DelBene said the programs will help reduce federal spending in the long run by empowering people to gain higher-paying jobs.

Those jobs can be helped through a broader economic development strategy, she said: "People can only work if jobs exist in their communities."