EKCEP is located at 941 North Main Street in Hazard, Kentucky.
About EKCEP
EKCEP—the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc.—helps workers and businesses in eastern Kentucky meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of today's economy.
EKCEP operates the JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for job seekers and employers—all under one roof.
Under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), EKCEP also administers programs that help adults looking for work, workers who have been dislocated from their jobs, and economically disadvantaged young people. WIA assistance ranges from career counseling and job search assistance to paying for tuition and providing on-the-job training opportunities.
For more than 40 years, EKCEP has served 23 mountain counties in
eastern Kentucky with exemplary training, employment, and workforce
development programs to meet the region's changing needs.
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EKCEP is headquartered in Hazard, Kentucky, and serves a population of nearly one-half million in 23 counties in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky.
EKCEP and 87 other Concentrated Employment Programs (CEPs) nationwide were formed in 1968 under federal Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) and the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) to meet the job training needs of people in areas of high unemployment and acute poverty. Every subsequent federal employment and training law has recognized that four of the rural CEPs have shown superior performance and effectiveness, and kept these CEPs in place. The latest federal law to confer this distinction was the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA), which gave the rural CEPs automatic designation as Workforce Investment Areas.
Throughout its four decades of service, EKCEP has exhibited extraordinary adaptability, flexibility, proficiency, and perseverance, operating the best programs possible under the prevailing legislation of the time. Periodically, EKCEP has initiated and administered programs to address the fluctuations in eastern Kentucky's coal industry, retraining dislocated workers during coal's periods of decline and training new workers during growth periods. EKCEP also designed and implemented a welfare-to-work program which helped hundreds of eastern Kentuckians get off the welfare rolls and into jobs. Many of these former welfare recipients and their families continue to prosper today because of EKCEP's assistance.
Today, EKCEP remains dedicated to fully utilizing all the opportunities
which WIA creates for tomorrow's workforce.
EKCEP: Helping Others Help Themselves
Throughout its three decades of service, EKCEP has exhibited extraordinarly adaptibility, flexibility, proficiency, and perseverance, operating the best programs possible under the prevailing legislation of the time.
Periodically, EKCEP has initiated and administered programs to address the fluctuations in eastern Kentucky's coal industry, retraining dislocated workers during coal's periods of decline, and training new workers during growth periods.
The Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc, (EKCEP) is funded through the Office of Employment and Training, Division of Workforce Services, Kentucky Education Cabinet, with Workforce Investment Act (WIA) funds. EKCEP is an equal-opportunity employer with equal-opportunity programs. Auxiliary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities.