How One Workforce Development Nonprofit Is Promoting Construction Careers
Date Posted: January 18, 2024
Posted In: Organizations, Workforce,
From Bluebeam Blog: Gina Vongkaeo’s life today as a painter by trade and a leader in her local union is far different from where she was headed a dozen years ago.
Growing up in poverty and on the streets in California, she’d been out of prison for a year when a friend introduced her to a program that would turn her life around—YouthBuild, an education and workforce development nonprofit that introduces young adults to careers in construction and other high-demand industries.
It took Vongkaeo about a month of watching and listening to the program’s leaders and teachers of YouthBuild San Joaquin to truly warm up to it. What helped was a common history. Like her, many of the staff members had lived in poverty and on the streets, and they were ready and willing to support her.
“My construction teachers, I’m really appreciative of them until today,” she said. “They taught me to have tough skin … they were teaching me discipline, mentally and physically.”
It’s the kind of story that’s played out over and over thanks to YouthBuild, which spans 280 programs across 47 US states and territories and 14 other countries. To date, some 200,000 teens and young adults have participated worldwide. And as part of their pre-apprenticeship program, it has helped build more than 36,000 units of affordable housing and other community spaces. The program, funded in part by the US Department of Labor, works primarily in economically disadvantaged communities.