Raynard Brown, age 29, has two beautiful daughters.
He wants the best for them, and that means a job with longevity and benefits, he said.
While Brown was working as a barber, he watched five of his friends graduate from the Metropolitan, Education and Training Center (MET Center) in construction career paths.
“They’re all successful now. They have no worries,” Brown said. “It’s a real good program. Good instructors, no tolerance. They put you on the right path.”
This week, Brown will graduate from the energy-efficiency building construction program, which the center offers through the Construction Prep Center.
On Feb. 17, Better Family Life, Inc., the managing partner at the MET Center, announced that the center will be able to train 900 more people like Brown with its $3.3 million Pathways Out of Poverty federal grant.
The grant requires applicants to be unemployed, high school dropouts or to have criminal records.
Students also must live in areas with at least a 15 percent unemployment rate, which includes Wellston, Pagedale, Hillsdale, Pine Lawn, Normandy, Jennings, Moline Acres, Riverview, and segments of the City of St. Louis, Florissant, Berkeley, St. Ann, Overland, University City, Olivette and North County.
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the grant intends to get struggling individuals on a path of economic self-sufficiency by employing them in energy-efficiency and renewable-energy industries.
The new funding allows the MET Center to increase training in three industries: energy-efficient building construction and retrofit, renewable electric power industry, and biofuels.
More specifically, the center will focus on four occupational paths within those three industries: weatherization technician/installer, solar PV Systems Installer, LEED Green Associate and biofuel technicians.
The center is an intricate weaving of community efforts. Better Family Life is the managing partner for the center and the group that applied for the grant. Other partners, including St. Louis Public Schools and St. Louis Community College, plug into the center to offer various services and training.
The partners that will be offering the green job training include Manufacturing Training Alliance, Construction Prep Center, CV Technology, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Sheet Metal Workers Local 36 and Abengoa Bioenergy.
Tough love training
Nakeya Parker, age 24, who is learning about green building practices at the Met Center, ultimately aspires to become a forewoman. When she’s done with the program, she knows she will have earned her certificate.
“So far so good, but it’s tough,” she said. “There is no tolerance for a lot of things.”
James Delancy, age 32 and a University City resident, has worked in construction off and on over the years among his family and friends. “The way I learned was to just get in and do it,” he said.
But when he tried to advance in a construction career, he was told that he must go through an apprenticeship program.
When he signed up for the carpentry track, the MET Center recruiters told him about the green building program, which sparked his interest.
“I’m learning that there are special things you have to know about your career,” Delancy said. “If you don’t know those, you’ll be behind most people who have attended classes at other tech colleges.”
He was surprised when he learned the MET Center representatives said that he didn’t have to pay for the entire program. “They were willing to train us and teach us exactly what we need to know for our field,” he said.
Staying committed to the program has forced him to make changes in his life.
“I had to eliminate a lot of friends who were doing negative things. They weren’t helping me better myself; they were actually keeping me in the negativity,” Delancy said.
“When you are in the positive, you keep moving up, and your family starts looking at you in a positive way. No more sleeping the day away.”
Reclaiming the abandoned
The actual MET Center building, at 6347 Plymouth Ave., was a hazardous wreck 14 years ago. Many people wouldn’t have looked twice at repairing the structure, said Malik Ahmed, president and CEO of Better Family Life.
“We take that same attitude about the people that we serve,” he said.
“The people that so many people have abandoned. The people that so many people have said are good for nothing. The people who many have lost hope. Our job is to restore them to their humanity so that they can see the world as other productive citizens see the world.”
Once students land a job, the center also offers financial literacy to understand how to budget their money and save for goals, such as higher education and homeownership.
“This is the concept of Better Family Life: to create holistic people,” Ahmed said.
Regional cooperation
Carolyn Seward, chief operating officer of Better Family Life and director of programs at the MET Center, said the center has 7,000 people come through its doors every year. Before the grant, they had funding for 1,000 of those individuals to get skill-based training.
“So that’s 5,000 to 6,000 people already that are looking for opportunities that we don’t have the funding for,” Seward said.
“Even though I’m excited about the grant, the real story is with regional leaders. This is what you can make happen when you work together.”
When jobseekers walk through the door, she said, they don’t care if it’s Better Family Life or the St. Louis Community College or the Special School District serving them. They want to know how to get a job.
So about five years ago, Seward sat down with about five community leaders to discuss a future vision for the community. Those people included Blair Forlaw, vice president for Regional Talent Development with St. Louis RCGA, Molly Bunton with St. Louis County, the former executive director of SLATE Tom Jones, and Steve Long and Lorna Finch with St. Louis Community College Workforce & Community Development.
The idea was to collectively improve the community and cut down on their costs in the process.
Seward said, “Every partner doesn’t need a recruiter. Every partner doesn’t need an assessor. We come together and we work for the betterment of the whole, which reduces the dollars that taxpayers are paying.”
When the group members began to look at all the skill-based training programs, they questioned whether people were really getting jobs, she said. The group wanted to make sure that their students were getting jobs. So, finding ways to improve curriculum and expand services has been the focus of the group’s monthly and quarterly meetings. By applying for grants together, they will be able to achieve this goal, she said.
“We’re going after many more grants,” Seward said. “It may be Better Family Life this time. But next time it will be one of the other partners.”
Seward worked in the corporate sector for 21 years, and now her work has been to integrate the nonprofit model with the corporate model.
“I understand technology and performance measures, and we must be able to show our funders and stakeholders what we are doing,” she said. “We have a story to tell and it’s a good one.”