About Us

Project QUEST is a community-based workforce development program created in 1992 through collaborative relationships involving Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), the Metro Alliance, the San Antonio business community leadership, employers of high-skill workers, the City of San Antonio, the regional Private Industry Council, the governor, the Texas Employment Commission. The model created placed people at the center of a genuine, far-reaching economic development strategy, based on educating hard-working people for high-skill jobs. It grew out of a new social compact among employers, workers and the community at large. To help working families adjust to the rapid transition in the economy San Antonio’s COPS and Metro Alliance engineered the development of a new kind of labor market intermediary. Project QUEST recognizes the legitimate interests of employers for effective, capable and competent workers while addressing the needs of workers for jobs that provide sustainable wages, health benefits, a career path, meaningful work and stability in the framework of a dynamic economy.

Project QUEST offers comprehensive training opportunities to economically disadvantaged area adults interested in pursuing careers in targeted industry sectors which include a variety of career paths in: healthcare; business services/ information technology; manufacturing, installation, repair and maintenance. Barriers such as minimal education, insufficient job skills and an ineffective support system plague many San Antonio residents, contributing to a cycle of poverty that is passed from one generation to the next. Project QUEST seeks to break this cycle by targeting these challenges and providing the educational and occupational skills training necessary to secure family-sustaining employment and to establish economic self-sustainability for themselves and their family.

The primary goals of Project QUEST are to develop a skilled and educated workforce, place participants in jobs paying family-level wages and, ultimately, to strengthen the local economy. To accomplish these goals, Project QUEST enrolls qualified San Antonio residents into high-demand occupational training programs, provides participants with intense case management and support services, and offers job search and placement assistance upon completion of training.

The mission of Project QUEST is to demonstrate the social and economic benefits achieved through investments in comprehensive skills training.
Specifically, Project QUEST defines the skills required to succeed in targeted, hard-to-fill occupations, then recruits, trains and develops adults so that they are qualified and ready for employment.