 YouthBuild Columbus Community School hosted theYouthBuild USA SMART Summer Training Conference in July, 2012. Conference attendees were treated to some real YBCCS hospitality, with Mr. Butler grilling up burgers and dogs, and Mr. Steward overseeing daily breakfast and local transportation for our visitors. Mr. Porter even got all the school walls re-painted and the floors cleaned and polished in time for the start of the conference. Truly, YBCCS shined in more ways than one. YouthBuild SMART (Start Making A Real Transformation) is a new DOL-funded re-entry program for recently adjudicated youth and young adults. YBCCS, along with its sister GED-track program, Franklin County YouthBuild, represent Columbus as one of nine sites located across the county that were chosen to participate in the SMART initiative. The other YouthBuild SMART sites are located in California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.  Click for Conference Highlights We are proud to represent the Midwest in this innovative program, which seeks to apply a YouthBuild model offering special features to meet the special needs of a problematic target population. Participant counseling and program orientation often begin behind the prison walls prior to release. To help support the transformation process, immediately after enrollment SMART participants are paired with mentors, many of whom themselves had brushes with the law in their youth. In addition to YouthBuild's customary training in home construction skills, SMART offers flexible training in other vocational tracks. Here in Columbus, we are offering nursing assistant and technology training, and hope to have a logistics training track in place for the start of the 2013-14 school year.
Comments are closed.
|
RSS Feed