Key Take-Aways:
- This NYC Non-Profit doubles as both a workforce development and community development organization, offering training to careers with good wages while also renovating community spaces and preserving housing.
- A 6-week pre-apprentice training program targets un/underemployed from all five boroughs of NYC.
- Program elements include key certifications, classroom training, and hands-on training.
- Success rates are high. A recent outcome survey to WDI indicates that our support helped 18 students gain entry to union trades apprenticeships.
Based in Brooklyn, Rebuilding Together NYC is a nonprofit whose mission is to repair homes, revitalize communities, and rebuild lives. Leveraging a robust volunteer and partnership network, the organization transforms the lives of low-income New Yorkers through programming designed to improve the safety and health of homes, re-skill underemployed individuals in the construction trades, and revitalize community spaces. Programs are offered free to NYC residents and include critical home repairs, accessibility modifications, and community center renovations.
A key offering of the organization is their workforce training and job placement service, including a 6-week pre-apprenticeship training program to re-skill un/underemployed New Yorkers for careers in construction. Program participants come from all five boroughs of NYC; 70% are below the average median income, 65% are NYCHA residents, 87% are under-represented minorities, 25% are women, and 20% have been formerly incarcerated or had some form of involvement with the criminal justice system. All participants have at minimum a high school diploma or GED, but rarely any higher education. The program’s primary goal is to help these students overcome the adversity of these statistics and place graduates into union apprenticeship programs, putting them on a path to career and financial stability.
Under “normal” circumstances, the first four weeks of the program take place at the Rebuilding Together NYC training facility where students are taught the Home Builders Institute Pre-Apprenticeship Certification Training (PACT) core curriculum, explore employment opportunities with the trades, train and prepare for interviews, and earn their OSHA-30 and Site Safety certifications. Students do extensive tool identification training and participate in hands-on lab time to become comfortable using tools to learn how to do projects they'll encounter once in the field. During the final two weeks of the program, under the leadership of the Manager of Construction, the cohort completes critical work on Rebuilding Together NYC's home repair and community center job sites. This gives students a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience on critical home repair and community center job sites.
For the hiring of program graduates into union apprenticeships, staff work one-on-one with each student to identify the trades that they are most interested in pursuing. Rebuilding Together has strategic partnerships with a number of labor unions that allow them to effectively place graduates in the trade that best suits their individual capabilities and goals.
In 2019 WDI supported Rebuilding Together NYC with much needed equipment for the pre-apprentice program. This equipment served to not only strengthen the capabilities of the training facility, but provided each graduate with a toolset, personal protective equipment, and textbooks - items that are critical needs for a new apprentice but can be unobtainable due to economic barriers.
In March 2020, due to the pandemic, RTNYC began the process of transitioning to online programming utilizing the Zoom platform. The Home Builders Institute Pre-Apprentice Certificate Training as well as OSHA 30 and SST (8-hour Fall Protection and 2-hour Drug and Alcohol Awareness) are now all taught online. In order to maintain the structure of the program, students continue to be scheduled for six weeks of class time. They are on camera for the duration of instruction and classes start promptly at 8:30 and end at 1:30 pm. Students continue to learn construction math including fractions and working with a tape measure. Safety, tool identification and usage, employability, financial literacy are all included as well. Guest speakers continue to be a part of the program. Recognizing we cannot physically go out into the field for the hands-on training, students are charged with completing an at home hands-on project where they construct a structure utilizing skills and information learned during class time. Our inaugural class, June 2020, enrolled eleven students, and all graduated. Our August class also enrolled and graduated 15. Placements continued this summer after a pause, despite the pandemic.
As of May 2020, WDI’s investment has helped 18 program graduates, all of whom were placed into apprenticeships upon graduation. Apprentices are spread out over 5 NYC union locals with wages ranging from $16 - $43/hour; 14 apprentices are making over $18/hour. As these results demonstrate, it cannot be understated how vital pre-apprentice programs like this are – both to the construction industry at large and especially to the populations that are targeted for participation.
Video: Daisha is a second-year painter apprentice working at 1 Vanderbilt. She has continued to work despite COVID-19 and talks about how much RTNYC helped her transition to her new career.