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County now Work Ready
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The Governor's Office of Workforce Development recently announced Dawson County is officially a Work Ready Community.

Established in 2006, Work Ready is a certification process based on a skills assessment for job seekers and a job profiling system for businesses designed to generate a workforce that meets the needs of local businesses.

"As we seek to recruit quality businesses to our community and thus quality job creation, we will be able to tell prospective business owners that our workforce is Certified Work Ready," said Linda Williams, president of the Dawson County Chamber of Commerce and Work Ready liaison. "This is important to them as it means we can fill their job openings."

Williams said the certification also means the community is trainable to high skill set levels.

"With more than 80 percent of our workforce leaving the county each day to travel to their job, it is clear that we need to create diverse and quality jobs," she said. "Being a Work Ready Community is one of the best tools to do that."

Williams applauded the local citizens who took the time to complete the assessment and helped the community earn the designation.

"Each one of them certainly helped contribute to the earning of this designation for Dawson County," she said. "A huge thank you to the Dawson County School System for the tremendous role they played in having our seniors assessed for the last few years. Their total numbers in the high school sector were over the top."

With certification, the county is now eligible to apply for a $7,000 grant to be used to improve the high school graduation rate by working with at-risk students and out of school youth.

An official sign will soon be installed at the county line on Ga. 400 announcing Dawson County as a Certified Work Ready Community, according to Williams.