Photo by ssteege1.

This morning, the District is expected to announce the donation of $3 million from the charitable arm of Walmart to establish job training programs around the city — another in a series of donations which will serve to market the store as a stakeholder in the District. The money, reports Jonathan O’Connell, will be used to pay for training programs focusing on retail work which will be held at the Community College of D.C. over the next three years:

The money will pay for workforce development and job preparation for 2,000 city residents at a time when the District’s unemployment rate is on the rise, up 0.6 percent to 10.4 percent in June.

Lisa Mallory, director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, said the funding is sorely needed to help prepare residents to work, “not just for Wal-Mart but for every retail employer.” […] In an interview, Michelle D. Gilliard, a senior director at the Wal-Mart Foundation, said that workforce development was one of the foundation’s four target giving areas. She said the company was committed to hiring city residents.

“All companies need to develop professional, well-prepared customer service employees, and we see this as a part of that,” she said.

Mallory stressed that the training partnership with Wal-Mart would benefit city residents regardless of how many stores the company opened.

“The Wal-Mart Foundation has stepped up to do this, but we’re willing to work with anybody,” she said.

Of course, all the happy talk about workforce development aside, we all know that the donation serves as a powerful marketing tool for Walmart, whose efforts to open four stores inside the District of Columbia has now cost them over $6 million. In June, Walmart announced that Chicago would be getting $20 million in charitable contributions as part of an effort to build “several dozen” stores in that city; it should be interesting to see how much, per store, Walmart’s charitable marketing runs them here in the District.

The program has also, predictably, caused the Walmart watchdogs to howl. In a letter sent to Mayor Vince Gray, the grassroots coalition Respect DC — who recently flash-mobbed a Walmart store in Laurel — complained that they were not given a seat at the table in the planning of the job training program.

“Our coalition includes many organizations with years of knowledge and experience regarding workforce development and job training issues. Not only were none of these organizations included in the planning of this program, none of them were even invited by your office to this event,” the letter states. “Excluding the members of our coalition from the development of this program was a missed opportunity to engage the community around Walmart’s entry into DC and to hold Walmart accountable to the promises it has been making.”