Skip navigation

Solid Advice for City Manager Erik Walsh: Talk to the Nun

Back in 1992, she was an organizer for COPS/Metro Alliance when the powerful community organization designed and persuaded the City to financially back Project Quest, which early on and to this day has been recognized as one of the most successful job training programs in the country. In 2011, when Project Quest was plagued with controversy from failings due not to corruption but to incompetence, Sister Pearl was brought in to turn it around. She did and ran the organization for six years.

Now the City of San Antonio is embarking on SA: Ready to Work, a program approved by the voters last November that will spend $154 million over five or six years in an effort to train the city’s working poor for good-paying jobs that the city is now generating.

[Photo Credit: Nick Wagner/San Antonio Report]

Solid Advice For Erik Walsh: Talk To The Nun, San Antonio Report [pdf]

Continue Reading

Read More

COPS/Metro Secures $400K in New Bexar County Funds via 4-0 Vote

April 30, 2025

In order to expand access to job training for low-income adults who live outside San Antonio's city limits, and at the urging of over one thousand COPS/Metro leaders last December, Bexar County Commissioners voted to invest $400,000 dollars in Project Quest for the first...

Read more

East Side Leaders: No More Broken Promises for East Side Economic Development

April 28, 2025

“We were told there will be jobs for the communities, hotels, restaurants, stores — empty promises,” said Darīus Lemelle, a leader with St. Paul United Methodist Church-COPS/Metro during a community stakeholders meeting in January. “That we see leaders continue to allow these developers to...

Read more