Paul Sousa, right, vice president of business development for Ananke IT Solutions, conducts a staff meeting Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Providence. The company won a Governor’s Workforce Award.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

CRANSTON — In this grim economy, business victories may be small but they can still be sweet, according to state business leaders who gathered Thursday for the annual meeting of the Governor’s Workforce Board Rhode Island.

During the morning breakfast meeting at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet, no one minced words about just how tough the economic climate is in Rhode Island. But members of the board, as well as some of its business partners, made it clear that they are not wavering in their mission to create more training opportunities ––– and hopefully as a result, job opportunities –– for Rhode Islanders.

They also celebrated companies and programs that have thrived in the past year, whether it be grant-funded employee training at Ananke IT Solutions in Providence or a push to get a nursing curriculum in area career-and-technical schools.

Creating a skilled work force will not only boost existing businesses but will also make the state more attractive to companies looking for a new home, Governor Carcieri told the crowd of about 200. And the bottom line, he said, is to create more employment opportunities.

“At the end of the day, this is about jobs,” Carcieri said. “I know we’re in tough times,” he said. “We’re in the trenches right now, but we will come out of this … and the important thing is to keep positioning ourselves with a skilled workforce so that we will have continued to strengthen the state and will be ready.”

Like other speakers at the workforce meeting, Carcieri did not sugar-coat the current grim economic landscape, telling the audience that on Friday the state would announce that Rhode Island’s unemployment rate has pushed past 12 percent.

Joseph J. MarcAurele, president of Citizens Bank Rhode Island, gave an overview of the broad menu of programs being fostered by the Workforce Board which was created by Carcieri in 2005.

Since that time, he said, the board has invested more than $37 million in Rhode Island’s business community — largely in the form of training programs that are the result of collaborations with businesses and schools.

Because the Workforce Board’s charge is so broad, it can be difficult to grasp all the endeavors it is involved in. Its programs range from supporting adult literacy classes to offering millions of dollars to businesses in employee-training grants.

In this economy, no one is expecting a giant corporation to touch down in the state with thousands of jobs, officials said. But they were happy to highlight a number of smaller-scale business triumphs.

For example, Pentair Electronic Packaging has a number of locations, but picked its Warwick site for expansion recently because of the training assistance and other support offered by the state, including a job fair.

Ananke IT Solutions was applauded for its use of a Workforce Board training grant which helped keep employees’ skills current with market demands.

John Conway, president and CEO of Ananke, described the Providence-based company as a broad-spectrum information technology firm that serves customers that range from large corporations to neighborhood retailers. The company can design large systems and networks, he said, or design a Web site for a small boutique business.

It also provides supplemental staff to companies and technical support for those that don’t have their own systems departments.

Conway, started the company in the mid-1990s and moved it to Rhode Island from Dallas in 2003 after completing a major project for Citizens Bank.

He acknowledged that the East Coast has not been the most fertile ground for rapid growth in recent years, but said his company continues to thrive and he is always on the lookout for creative initiatives such as the training grant he received from the Workforce Board.

Said Carcieri in his speech, “Businesses are looking for states with quality workforces and that’s what we’re trying to create.”

bpoliche@projo.com