FOREST PARK, Ga. — The nonprofit Veterans Training Empowerment Center announced on New Year’s Day that they would be working to turn an out of service Georgia military base into a training center for veterans entering the civilian workforce.
Fort Gillem, located in Forest Park, is a formerly active military base built in 1941 and decommissioned in 2011.
VTEC said they plan to turn the Fort Gillem campus into a training and hiring center to assist military service members transitioning to civilian life.
Every year, VTEC says more than 200,000 military transition out of service. To assist with closing a workforce gap created by this transitional process, the nonprofit is developing the VTEC National Military Training & Hiring Campus at Fort Gillem.
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The plan is to use the former military base as a centralized hub for training and connecting transitioning service members, veterans National Guard and Reserve members, and their spouses, with employers across multiple industries.
As part of the developing program, VTEC said it plans to consolidate training, credentialing and hiring into a single system to avoid inefficiencies and fragmenting veteran hiring pipelines.
“Over five years, it is projected to train and place more than 10,000 military-connected individuals and support over 700 on-campus and partner-affiliated jobs, providing companies with a reliable, scalable source of pre-trained, job-ready talent,” VTEC said in their New Year announcement.
On Monday, VTEC announced they were official under contract to purchase the property at the Fort Gillem Historic District Army Base.
The purchase includes seven buildings across 31 acres of land which will be transitioned into what VTEC calls a one-stop shop for training and hiring soldiers, immediate family members of soldiers and to provide workforce training for them.
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