But for everyone's context that might be listening in today, Barb, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your journey in workforce development?

Absolutely.

Actually, I started this nonprofit on behalf of a entrepreneur named Jack Dwyer.

And before I started this nonprofit in 2001, I had my own company for 18 years and it was a communications company.

We did education, health care, not for profit government, those kinds of things.

And I had a lot of clients that were workforce as well as a lot of nonprofits.

And I loved what I did.

So let me ask, in practice, how does that look for anyone that comes and receives services from Dwyer? How does that look in practice? What keeps them debt-free?

So I wanna ask you just if you can start off by telling us a little bit about what is Dwyer Workforce Development, what is, what is it that you're doing there? And because we're talking to other leaders, like, give us a sense of the size, like how many employees, roughly how big is your budget, those kinds of things, to right-size what we hear.

Okay.

So I started Dwyer Workforce Development on June 1st of 2020.

2021, sorry.

2021.

I sold my company, my prior company that I had for 18 years, and my earn-out aligned with the pandemic starting.

And I had sold it because I wanted to run a nonprofit.

Yeah.

Uh, we're gonna get to that in a minute, but first of all, how did we get here? Why do we have a healthcare worker shortage?

So it's a number of reasons.

COVID did a really big, um, drain of the nurses and certified nursing assistants, all the healthcare workers really.

People got burned out.

They decided that, that, you know, they just couldn't do it anymore.

Um, and interestingly though, it did make people more interested in nursing, but there are so many barriers to get into nursing.

It's expensive and, um, you know, so Dwyer is trying to take people who are very anxious to be in a, a medical position but lack the opportunity, lack the funds.

This is something I wanna pursue," what should they, what should they do? What steps do you recommend that they take?

But first of all, how did we get here? Why do we have a healthcare worker shortage?

So it's a number of reasons.

COVID did a really big... drain of the nurses and certified nursing assistants, all the healthcare workers, really people got burned out.

They decided that, that, you know, they just couldn't do it anymore.

Um, and interestingly though, it did make people more interested in nursing, but there are so many barriers to get into nursing.

It's expensive.

And, um, you know, so Dwyer is trying to take people who are very anxious to be in a a medical position, but lack the opportunity, lack the funds.

What should they what should they do? What steps do you recommend that they take?

Is that safe to say, Barb?

to say Alex and there is a huge need for what we do is train people to be certified nursing assistants and those people are the foundation of health care they are the people that do the hands-on care for our loved ones as it's not only when they age it's even you know in the hospitals as they're there for a critical illness or whatever it is surgery but there is a need for these certified nursing assistants and that's what Dwyer does we train people even better, who lack opportunity.

And we give them an opportunity to enter the healthcare workforce.

We do it differently than most people do.

And we give them a path all the way to nursing.

And also, Alex, you mentioned nurses.

There's a big need for nurses.

And so is it augmenting and making things more efficient already within healthcare, or is it truly replacing work?

What exactly do they do? How do they help speed up and improve care? Uh, why is there such a shortage of them in particular?

So, uh, basically, they, th- well, there's two parts to that question.

Let me start about why they're the backbone, and then I'll get to, um, like, why there's a shortage.

But they're the backbone of it because they provide basic needs for an individual in a healthcare place.

So, uh, it's, they're bathing, they're moving, they're lifting, they're doing the special things that people need.

They change the sheets.

They, they, um, provide emotional support for people, um, in hospitals and in, in nursing homes.

Talk to me a little bit more about what Dwyer does and how it, it, you know, provides these opportunities for people in the healthcare industry.