A Providence organization takes young people with bleak futures and trains them for careers in the construction trades

01:20 AM EDT on Sunday, May 15, 2005

BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- At the age of 23, Sarn Heng had given up hope.

He had bounced around three high schools -- Mount Pleasant, Central and the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy -- before he finally dropped out.

The next five years he spent "in and out of jail," Heng said.

Once he realized he had to turn his life around, he said, he despaired that his criminal record would prevent him from finding a job.

Then his brother told him about Youthbuild -- an intensive 10-month high school equivalency diploma program that also teaches marketable skills in the construction trades.

Youthbuild in Providence is part of a nationwide network of 200 federally financed programs that aim to rescue youth from otherwise bleak futures and help revitalize the construction trades, which no longer can rely on membership passing from father to son.

Journal photo / Bill Murphy

Sarn Heng sands sheetrock in a house under construction on Steere Street in Providence that Youthbuild is putting up in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity.

In the last year, Heng has acquired his general equivalency diploma and has been accepted into the apprenticeship program of the Rhode Island Carpenters Union Local 94, an on-the-job training experience that pays $26 an hour plus benefits to start and holds the promise of a lifelong career.

"If I knew about this program earlier," Heng said, he might have avoided being locked up.

Youthbuild "teaches you how to know yourself so you won't abuse yourself. That's what leads to jail," he said.

"The public schools don't teach you real life," Heng added. "They teach you things just off a book."

Youthbuild, open to students 16 to 24 years of age, is a program of the Providence Plan, a private, nonprofit agency that works with both the public and private sectors in a multifaceted effort to curb poverty and urban decline.

Now in its eighth academic year, Youthbuild has graduated about 100 students and has another 30 in training.

Andrew Cortes, Youthbuild's executive director, is himself a member of Local 94 and recognizes the benefits of the program both to the students and the building trades.

That sector is about the only remaining part of the work force where someone without a college degree can earn enough to support a family, Cortes said.

Jim Jackson of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union put it another way: "Other programs out there offer jobs. We offer a career. I think that sums it up completely."

The trades are no longer relying on the "old boy" network in which union membership was passed down from generation to generation.

According to Scott Molloy, a professor at the Labor Research Center of the University of Rhode Island, "A lot of the people in the trades don't want their kids to go into the trades, despite the fact that they can make more than [in] a white-collar computer job.

"The new mentality is that if you work with your hands, it's somehow demeaning and not worthy of respect," he said.

But this attitude shift, combined with governmental pressure to integrate the trades, has opened opportunities for people who decades ago would not have been able to get a union card, Molloy said.

Scott Duhamel, an organizer for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, agrees that fewer and fewer youngsters are following in their fathers' footsteps.

"Not that we have trouble" recruiting members, he said, "but we realize it has to be opened up.

"All the trades are trying to reach out a little further" into urban neighborhoods, Duhamel said. "That's where the next working class is coming from."

Jackson, director of the electricians' apprenticeship program for Local 99 of the IBEW, says he gets about 600 applications in Rhode Island for about 35 positions every year.

Youthbuild in Providence is "a very good program, a very strong program, as are most of the high schools and career and technical centers" who send him applicants, Jackson said.

Youthbuild has had "a remarkable amount of success with grants lately," because "people recognize the value of this program," Cortes said.

To ensure its future, "we plan to broaden our outreach to the private sector," he said, "because ultimately, we are training people who will be exemplary employees in the private sector."

With a recent $700,000 grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as financing from other partners, Youthbuild has enough money to continue for the next 2 1/2 years, according to Patrick McGuigan, executive director of the Providence Plan.

Cortes said the HUD grant provides for a majority of the program's operating costs, as well as biweekly stipends of $200 for each student.

An $87,000 grant from Americorps pays for some staff time and also provides yearly stipends of $2,300 each to 20 students for community service. While service in the community is an integral component of the program, the stipends go only to those who plan to continue their formal education in the next seven years, Cortes said.

The building trades contribute about $30,000 worth of services annually, he added.

Their representatives design lessons and teach at Youthbuild construction sites, donating their time and labor on the job, Cortes said, and their role is "absolutely critical" in encouraging students to go into the work.

Youthbuild recently won a $100,000 grant from the United Way to support graduates and track their progress over the next two years, he said. Until now, Youthbuild has not had the finances to formally evaluate the long-range impact of the program.

Youthbuild's home base is leased space on the first floor of a former bakery on Delaine Street, off Olneyville Square, where students spend two days a week in the classroom. They work in construction for two more days a week and do community service on the fifth day. One cold day earlier this semester, Heng helped supervise students who were stuffing insulation into the walls of a new single-family house off Manton Avenue that they are building in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity.

During a break, Derek Mills, Dilya Nunez and Lessie Hazard -- all dropouts from the city's high schools -- warmed their hands over a space heater and explained how Youthbuild has hooked them on getting an education when traditional methods failed.

In one way or another, each one signaled that much of the difference between Youthbuild and traditional high schools has been a personal connection with at least one adult.

And they said Youthbuild has managed to make education relevant to their lives, while the public school system had not.

For Hazard, high school meant endless boredom and worksheets, or "dittos," she said.

In high school, "they teach you what they want you to know, not what you need to know," said Nunez.

At the age of 17, Mills has already learned how to frame a house, install the strapping that will hold the ceilings in place and put in the stairs.

Stairs "are hard to do, but they taught us everything," he said. "Here they teach you, and they help you out individually.

"Even if you have problems at home, you can talk to them."

In Youthbuild's offices, the door to the counselor's office is always open -- unless he's deep in conversation with a troubled student.

In those cases, Robert Nyahkoon shuts the door and tells the student sitting on the other side of the desk to "forget about school, forget about construction" and talk about whatever troubles him or her.

Nyahkoon gives out his cell phone number, he said, because "I do have that bond with them."

And whenever there's an emergency -- at midnight or 2 a.m. -- Nyahkoon answers the call.

Nyahkoon said the students he sees are weighed down by the gamut of social ills, including early pregnancy, domestic or sexual abuse and homelessness.

He and Cortes each said that homelessness has become an increasing problem among Youthbuild's students.

Some students don't have families to rely on and can't afford a place to stay, Nyahkoon said. Others have been thrown out by parents who are fed up, even as the students are showing that they can turn their lives around, he said.

Cortes said that yet another group of students are the sole providers for their parents and themselves, attending school during the day and working full time at night -- sometimes until 3 a.m.

These kinds of precarious living conditions make it difficult for Youthbuild to keep students, Cortes said, but the City of Providence has made available $2,000 a year in hardship money from the Dexter Donation to help them get past the kinds of crises that otherwise might force them to drop out.

Ideally, he said, he would like to see Youthbuild have its own transitional housing so that homelessness ceases to be an issue.

In the former bakery, the Youthbuild staff has put up partitions and splashed bright paint on the walls to camouflage its industrial origins.

Through thin walls, students in a business class are overheard debating their teacher loudly, but respectfully, with each comment focused directly on the topic at hand.

At the end of the school or work day, the Youthbuild headquarters is the meeting place for a pickup game of football. There's also a chess club and other activities, Cortes said.

The students "have come together as a family," he explained.

Outside Cortes' office, a bulletin board has been set up to recognize the achievements of individual students. In the first four months of the 10-month program, 16 students -- more than half the class -- had passed all five tests for the GED.

Derek Mills had passed the science, social studies, reading and math components four months into the Youthbuild program, and he has since passed the writing test as well.

Shannon Dolan, educational coordinator for Youthbuild, said, "These kids have a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge that a lot of people don't give them credit for."

Dolan says she tries to motivate students by knowing them well and using that knowledge to find personal connections between the students and the academic work.

The novel Monster, about a 16-year-old tried as an adult for murder, made for engaging reading because "all the students have had experience with the criminal-justice system," Dolan said, either themselves or through friends.

For science, students conducted research projects on various diseases. They chose medical conditions that helped them understand their own bodies or the impact of illness on their families, she said.

One student chose diabetes. Another chose Lou Gehrig's disease, because his mother died of it, Dolan said.

And by the time students have framed a house and installed a stairway, they understand the relevance of math, she said.

While Youthbuild aims to connect its graduates with the building trades, some move on to the Community College of Rhode Island or the New England Institute of Technology.

With an equivalency diploma -- the academic testing was made more rigorous in 2002 -- students also have a shot at the Talent Development program at the University of Rhode Island, depending on the program they want to enter, Dolan said.

No matter where they go, education remains a part of their lives.

Molloy said that most construction unions have "got very much into training. With the tremendous pressure coming from the nonunion sectors, they are really pushing their members to be one step ahead of the competition; to be physically in shape and on the cutting edge of what's new in that sector."

The IBEW has a five-year curriculum that combines work with part-time training, according to Jackson. He said all the trade unions emphasize keeping their members up to date with the newest technologies.

"Education continues on for a lifetime," Jackson said.

Youthbuild has placed students with both the carpenters union and the IBEW. Some are now journeyman electricians, making $30.47 an hour.

In the two years he has run Youthbuild, said Cortes, "It's very rare that there's not a positive outcome."

Sarn Heng, for example, said Youthbuild has given him so much that he wants to give back. Rather than immediately accept his position with the carpenters union, he has decided to wait a year so he can work on the Youthbuild staff, training new students in basic construction.

Cortes said he will pay Heng a salary "comparable" to the carpenters' apprenticeship program and will try to persuade the union to admit him next year at the second-year level.

"As much as we value his contribution, I almost tried to talk him out of it," Cortes said.

"But his perspective on the program [as a former student] is one that none of the other staff can bring," he said. "We are proud to have him."

Heng said that from his point of view, he has been given "a chance of a lifetime."