Skills for Chicagoland’s Future (Skills) announced it is expanding into Chicago’s south and west side communities to help meet the growing need of thousands of unemployed residents who have been impacted the most by the COVID-19 pandemic. Skills’ planned expansion on the south and west sides of Chicago has taken on a heightened urgency as those communities face unprecedented and disproportionate layoffs and financial hardship resulting from the pandemic. Skills, a public-private partnership that works with the unemployed to help them prepare and secure jobs with Chicago employers, announced its plans at its sixth annual Employment Champions Breakfast featuring remarks by Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Skills announced that they will begin operating out of the Greater Englewood, Community Development Corporation’s shared office space for local nonprofits at 815 W. 63rd St., this year. The space allows Skills’ team to work even closer with the south side residents they serve. Skills also announced plans to fundraise to operate a third space on the city’s west side in order to provide its unique job-first employment assistance and resources more efficiently in those communities.