Ulster YouthBuild, September’s Client of the Month, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to giving young adults a second chance at earning their high school diploma while learning leadership and life skills, and receiving occupational skills training in housing construction. Ulster YouthBuild started in 1994 with a grant from the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) awarded to BOCES. Bonnie Landi was the first Program Director hired for the program, and while the organization has undergone some changes over the years, Bonnie has remained on as the Executive Director of the YouthBuild program with Frank Neglia as the Program Director for operations. The organization recruits candidates from Kingston, NY and surrounding Ulster County areas. Candidates must be between the ages of 16-24 to be eligible and must attend a two-week Mental Toughness Orientation that is designed to assess their commitment to participate. Based on their attitude, attendance, and commitment during the MTO, they are invited to join the program—enrollment is not automatic. No one is ever turned away from applying, but they learn at the very beginning that YouthBuild gives everyone a chance as long as they are committed. If they are committed to the mission of YouthBuild, they can be successful and change the direction of their lives and their future. Throughout the course of the ten month program, in addition to earning their NYS GED high school diploma, students will learn several different life skills and certifications, including: leadership development, on-the-job construction skills training, manufacturing skills training, job readiness, OSHA10, CPR/first aid/Narcan, a Home Builders Institute Pre-Apprentice Construction Training (PACT) credential, and ToolingU CMfgA.
To date, YouthBuild has constructed an impressive 31 homes in the area, with all homes being sold to first-time low-income homebuyers. The organization has a number of employer partners that are willing to hire graduates of the program, including Viking Manufacturing, Tower Manufacturing, Howmet Aerospace Manufacturing, FALA Technologies Manufacturing, All County Waterproofing & Works, Rotron, Bart Hills Tree Service, Gentle Office Cleaning Service, Herzogs, Mullen Construction, Nugget Properties, Wolf Construction, Saugerties Parks & Rec, and RUPCO. Ulster YouthBuild has been insured by Ryan & Ryan Insurance Brokers since January 2022. When asked why they chose R&R as their insurance agency, Bonnie responded by stating: “Ryan & Ryan was the best fit for Ulster YouthBuild because it seemed like they wanted to help us and were willing to go the extra mile to ensure we had great insurance coverage. They are always responsive to our needs and promptly answer any questions we have.” Ulster YouthBuild is always looking for additional employers willing to hire their graduates and welcome any new companies, so if interested, please contact Bonnie Landi at 845-399-2757. And if you, or someone you know, could use the healthy and supportive environment that our September Client of the Month offers, visit the Ulster YouthBuild website for more information.
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It’s that time of the year again. Have you prepared your garden for the winter? Putting your garden to bed for the winter can be an arduous task. But when you have many helping hands and a willing to learn, nothing is impossible! On September 9, the gardens at the Pine Street African Burial Grounds began its fall clean-up with the help of Ulster YouthBuild.
YouthBuild is a holistic comprehensive job training program that provides education, leadership development, community service, and housing construction skills to youth ages 16-24. As part of their community service, youth met at Pine Street to support the volunteer garden stewards in a variety of tasks for the annual garden fall clean-up. Youth received directions from volunteer garden steward Laurie Berrios, a Kingston resident and member the Grow Well Focus Team. “Students were curious how a burial ground was built, so we spent some time reviewing the history and then got to work”, said Berrios. Berrios led youth in a variety of tasks which included moving mounds of mulch, repairing broken garden beds, removing invasive plants, removing any dead wood, and moving and preparing soil for its hibernation. Berrios explained to students the history of the African Burial Grounds. The garden itself, sits in a field separate and adjacent to the sacred burial grounds which were identified by archeologist through Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR Scan) and continue to be studied. This sacred site was used as a burial ground for enslaved Africans between the 1700s and mid-1800s. In 2019 it was protected by Harambee and the Kingston Land Trust in collaboration with Scenic Hudson and will be converted into a community memorial site. YouthBuild students keep an active schedule between hands-on learning in the construction trades through projects across the city, and classroom time focused on academics as they prepare for their equivalency exams. The fall clean-up was an experience and learn more about soil, vegetables, plants, and insects. After all, gardens are magical places of continuous hands-on learning. Students even nibbled on some edible plants for the first time and made friends with a few bugs. They also created a space for themselves to rest and reflect which they called the “Friendship Circle”. This year’s local growing season was impacted by extreme weather conditions. Kingston endured weeks of drought and heavy storms in summer peak months. The July storms caused took down tree limbs, partially destroying the garden’s garage structure. YouthBuild’s helping hands moved contents from the garage into the basement for safe keeping through the winter until the garage can be repaired. KINGSTON, N.Y. — An Ulster county organization that builds affordable homes has become the recipient of a nearly $1.07 million federal grant.
Bonnie Landi, who is executive director of Ulster YouthBuild, said the organization has received a $1,069,258 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. YouthBuild is a youth and community development program that offers its participants the opportunity to continue their education to secure a high school equivalency diploma, and receive life skills and leadership development training, while learning housing construction skills with hands-on training at a housing construction site. To date, Ulster YouthBuild has completed 28 houses, 26 in Kingston, and one each in Ellenville and the town of Ulster. The U.S. Department of Labor has announced awards of up to $90 million to YouthBuild program grants to 68 grantees in 28 states and Puerto Rico, Landi said. The Ulster YouthBuild program was one of those grantees, and one out of seven in New York. The YouthBuild program in Ulster County has been funded through the federally-funded YouthBuild initiative since it started up in 1994 when the funds were allocated through the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) until 2006. “The YouthBuild program works to revitalize community neighborhoods, and at the same time provides opportunities for YouthBuild students to embark on a positive direction to rebuild their lives,” Landi said in a statement. “The philosophy of a YouthBuild program is to re-engage youth in education and provide hands-on work experience utilizing the five components of the YouthBuild model, education, occupational skills training, leadership development, full-time counseling, and, ultimately, job placement or placement in post-secondary education.” Landi said the program also provides life skills training to assist students in overcoming barriers. “The program is about presenting youth with various opportunities as well as creating a cycle of positive transformation,” Landi added. Landi added that many of the YouthBuild students are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Participants in the program build affordable houses that are sold to low-income first-time homebuyers. The Ulster YouthBuild grant will be implemented during a three-year period. It targets an area that extends from Saugerties to Ellenville. In addition to housing construction skills training, the program will also offer an additional alternative occupational skills training component in the area of manufacturing. The manufacturing training will be offered to eight of the 60 students to be enrolled in the program. The YouthBuild program will work with several Ulster County manufacturing employer partners who will assist in the training of YouthBuild participants, according to Landi. The lack of affordable housing in the mid-Hudson region is much on our minds these days, as better-paid refugees from New York City flee north and gobble up real estate that seems comparatively inexpensive from their perspective. Handwringing over the subject always seems to devolve into despair, as no one can come up with incentives that will motivate builders to build housing that isn’t as costly as the high end of the market will bear. This has become doubly true since the supply-line difficulties of the pandemic economy have driven up the prices of construction materials by as much as 35 percent.
As a result, the brunt of the responsibility for creating workforce housing – or at least to chip away at the edges of this immense problem – falls on not-for-profits subsidized by government grant funding. RUPCO is much in the news, and we applaud that organization’s ongoing efforts to turn derelict properties into affordable rentals for artists, the poor and the elderly. But there’s another program that has labored in Ulster County, mainly the City of Kingston, with far less fanfare for going on three decades now. It’s called Ulster YouthBuild, and it’s high time for this amazing organization to emerge from the shadows into the spotlight and take a bow. “We’re so busy doing the work that we don’t have time to give ourselves for outreach,” says Bonnie Landi, a Kingston native who founded Ulster YouthBuild in 1994 and remains its executive director. The day Hudson Valley One reached her, in fact, Landi was putting the finishing touches on a “very complex” New York State grant application due that very afternoon. She has established an enviable track record in getting the local organization funded to the tune of about a million dollars every three years. The funding comes down from the federal Department of Labor, with more than 250 YouthBuild programs in 44 states plus Puerto Rico having to compete for about 80 total grants awarded per year. The program originated in East Harlem, founded in 1978 by a teacher named Dorothy Stoneman, and gradually spread across the country and the globe. Today there are YouthBuild organizations in Canada, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica and Brazil. All share the same mission: to empower disadvantaged youth aged 17 to 24 to complete their educations and acquire marketable skills in the building trades. Students in the “holistic, comprehensive” program stay for one to two years, getting intensive hands-on training at construction sites, either renovating or building from scratch. Upon completion, the houses are sold at below-market-rate prices to low-income first-time homebuyers. In Kingston, says Landi, the houses the young trainees rebuild were “either vacant or not collecting taxes. Now they’ve gone back onto the City tax rolls, so there’s a lot of win/win.” Purchasers must sign a restrictive covenant preventing them from “flipping” the house until after five years of occupancy, and only one in Ulster YouthBuild’s 27-year history has ever been resold. She recalls the purchasers of the program’s very first completed project, a family with four children, being able to relocate from a small two-bedroom apartment into a four-bedroom house. “They still own the house,” she says with satisfaction. Those who live nearby benefit as well: “Homeownership in a neighborhood increases the revitalization of the neighborhood.” One of the organization’s biggest undertakings was the acquisition of an entire block of six houses in Kingston, on Prospect Street between Henry and Van Buren. Four of them were renovated, but two were in such bad shape that they had to be dismantled and two new houses built from scratch where they had stood. “They literally took down one house just so the kids could see how houses were built in the ‘40s. Back then there were no zoning requirements or building requirements. Then they learned how you have to do them today.” Program participants spend about 15 hours in classroom settings and 15 on the job site each week, according to Landi. They learn best practices in building – these days including not only construction engineering, tool use and care and how to handle materials safely, but also “green building” techniques for energy conservation and sustainability. “This house you could heat with a candle,” proudly declares Robert DePace, head builder trainer at YouthBuild’s current project: an energy-efficient, two-story, three-bedroom house newly built on Sycamore Street in the Ponckhockie neighborhood. A Marlboro native who spent years in a construction battalion in the US Navy and went on to own a construction business, DePace has nothing but praise for the YouthBuild model. “This job is fun and interesting because of the lives I get to touch every day,” he says. “The youth are a lot of fun to work with.” Educational goals for program participants include completing a GED if they didn’t complete high school, as well as acquiring certification in a variety of technical skills and OSHA safety preparedness. “This program teaches it all: electric, plumbing, carpentry. We try to show job readiness,” says Amoni Moe-Wright, who spent one year as a student in the program before being hired by YouthBuild as construction crew leader for the Sycamore Street site. When he discovered the program in 2020, Moe-Wright says, “I was just lost. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I tried college for two months, but it wasn’t for me. I would get in trouble here and there.” Involvement in YouthBuild has given him a new sense of purpose and growing confidence in his skills, which he’s now passing along to the next group of trainees. “I enjoy that these kids look up to me. They don’t see the growth that they could achieve. But here, you’re seeing your progress every day.” YouthBuild graduates get another year of follow-up, case management and job placement services to help keep them on track to succeed. Many end up being hired by local manufacturing firms that have established partnerships with the program, including Fala Technologies, Elna Magnetics, Tower Products and Viking Packaging. “They’re committed to working with us,” says Landi. On Sycamore Street, the house that these young people have been building from the ground up, year-round since the autumn of 2020, is nearing completion. Kitchen cabinets and appliances have just been delivered on the day that Hudson Valley One paid a visit, and the crew is getting ready to lay down hardwood flooring in the downstairs. The taping and sheetrocking – a job that many do-it-yourselfers find daunting job – looks remarkably professional. From the front porch, there’s an angled view of the Hudson River, and there’s a sizable private yard out back. According to Landi, a purchaser has already been qualified, with the sale likely to close in the spring. But first there will be an Open House for the general public to celebrate another YouthBuild success story. Then it’ll be on to the next project: a rehab on Franklin Street. TOWN OF ULSTER >> At one point in his young life, Isaiah Heil felt like his teachers had given up on him and he ended up dropping out of school and selling drugs.
Then the 16-year-old from Kingston learned about a program called Ulster YouthBuild. He said joining that program turned his life around and gave him confidence in himself. “They never gave up on me,” Heil said recently. He said he now has goals in his life, which include getting his high school equivalency degree and becoming an electrician or going to work in construction. Ulster YouthBuild has been in operation since 1994 and is part of a nationwide program that works with out-of-school young people between the ages of 16 and 24. Interested youth apply to the program and must undergo a three-week mental toughness orientation. Those youth who are chosen receive the opportunity to earn their high school equivalency degree and learn a trade. “The whole philosophy of the program is to re-engage them into education,” program Executive Director Bonnie Landi said. She said the program utilizes the five components of education, construction, leadership development, job placement and counseling. Landi said the program also teaches its youth life skills and helps them overcome any barriers that might stand in the way of their success. She said the program is about presenting the youth with opportunities. Landi said Ulster YouthBuild works with 27 young people at a time, each of who stays in the program between six and 12 months. During that time, the participants are split into two teams and spend one week in the classroom and one week working on a construction site. Recently, the Kingston city Common Council sold a home on Susan Street to the YMCA for $1. As part of their construction component, Ulster YouthBuild participants will renovate that home, which will then be sold to a low-income, first-time homebuyer. “It creates this whole cycle of community transformation,” Program Manager Jodi Hocking said. She said many of the young people in YouthBuild come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, but through the program earn their high school equivalency degree, learn a trade and rebuild a home for someone else. Landi said the work on rehabilitating or rebuilding a home is a required part of the YouthBuild program. She added that participants also perform community service projects that are often construction related. Doing so allows them to earn hours towards an AmeriCorps scholarship, Landi said. Hocking said the youth most recently assisted the Clinton Avenue United Methodist Church by making their gardens handicapped accessible and expanding their storage and food pantry. They also hung sheetrock and painted a classroom at the church, she said. Since it started, Ulster YouthBuild has completed work on 22 homes, all of which were sold to first-time homebuyers. The program participants also created the shower complex at the Rondout waterfront that is used by boaters and installed a new roof on the VFW hall on East Chester Street, amongst other projects. On the education side, the participants were working on designing a treehouse idea for someone in Western New York. Hocking said the project integrates the participants’ curriculum and gets them involved in their education. She said the treehouse project has the theme of “Galileo’s Observatory,” so the youth are using science and math to design the structure, but are also learning about civic issue such as zoning laws. Hocking said the youth are also learning about Galileo himself and about different astronomy theories. While the program works to help its participants earn their high school equivalency degrees, a small percentage can already be high school graduates, Landi said. She said they must, however, have a basic skill deficiency. Angel Lacey, 19, was one of those. He said it was a miracle he graduated high school in 2015, noting he had been a “problem kid.” Lacey said he found YouthBuild because he was looking for a job to learn construction and came across an ad on Craigslist. He said YouthBuild has been much better for him. “I stepped up two grade levels in my math,” Lacey said. He said he is also learning about time management and how to manage his money. Additionally, he was able to go to Washington, D.C. to advocate for the program, Lacey said. Justin Krum, 24, also was part of the group that attended the Conference of Young Leaders event in Washington. He said through that trip he met more than 200 people, but felt like he had known them forever. Krum said he was able to speak with YouthBuild graduates who had gone on to become successful. Krum said he got involved in Ulster YouthBuild because he was just looking for better things in his life. He said he has a high school diploma but had just gone into the workforce and not furthered his education. Krum said a friend told him about the program and he qualified due to a deficiency in math skills. Now that he has been a part of the program, Krum said he has a few things he wants to do with his life. He said he would like to join the police academy or open his own business as a carpenter or in general construction. For Corrin Bach, 18, it was a friend who brought her to YouthBuild. She said she was doing nothing with her life and was essentially sitting home all day. Bach said she had been in and out of high school because she was bullied all the time, causing her to become suicidal. YouthBuild changed that for her, she said. “I never thought I would find so much support,” Bach said. She said now she is involved and wants to go to college. Eventually, Bach said, she wants to get her master’s degree in psychology so she can help other kids who have gone through what she herself experienced. Landi added that Ulster YouthBuild wants to continue to be a safe haven for its participants. She said the participants will get the education, nurturing and care they need. Hocking added that as the participants are learning, they are breaking down achievement gaps and improving their own outcomes. “It changes the trajectory that they were on,” Hocking said. KINGSTON – Ulster YouthBuild is making progress on the construction of a new home on Sycamore Street in the City of Kingston.
Once complete, the house will be sold to first-time low-income home buyers. The city provided Ulster YouthBuild with the vacant land to build the house. Ulster YouthBuild is a comprehensive job training, educational, leadership development, and community development program focused on assisting out-of-school low-income young people between the ages of 16 to 24. Typically the program can be completed in six months and participants can earn a stipend while studying for their high school equivalent test, gaining skills needed to join the workforce, and giving back to the community by building affordable housing. The construction training prepares participants for the workforce and instills job readiness. The YouthBuild home located at 51-53 Sycamore Street has been sold! Are you a low-income first-time home buyer? Then contact RUPCO at 845-331-9860 and ask about the next YouthBuild home to be completed and get the process started to learn more about home ownership! The image below is of the YouthBuild house on Emerick Street which was sold previously. The Sycamore Street house is exactly the same except that the siding is gray and not yellow.
The Ulster YouthBuild, LLC Kingston Area YouthBuild received a three year DOL Federal Grant in the amount of $987,881, to continue operating a YouthBuild program in the City of Kingston and surrounding Ulster County locations. This is an increase in the amount awarded to Ulster YouthBuild and will allow continuation of the program for the period January 1, 2020 through March 31, 2023. “We are pleased that the U.S. DOL has again awarded a YouthBuild grant to Ulster YouthBuild. We are also excited that this new award will offer a second alternative industry training, manufacturing, for the young people we will serve during the program performance period" said Bonnie Landi, Executive Director of Ulster YouthBuild.
The Ulster YouthBuild grant will focus on Education, Housing Construction skills training, Manufacturing skills training, and Life Skills/Leadership Development, which will be offered to income eligible young adults ages 16-24 who are no longer attending high school. During the operation period of the grant, YouthBuild will be building a new house on property that was transferred to the Ulster YouthBuild, LLC by the City of Kingston. The house once completed, will be offered for sale to a low-income first-time home buyer. In keeping with the mission to serve, community service projects will also be offered as time permits. Supporting partners in the program include the YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County, City of Kingston, RUPCO, Ulster BOCES, U.C. OET, Habitat for Humanity, and many other employer partner agencies that offer support. We will continue to provide program information sessions to our partners that is designed to help them better understand what YouthBuild is and how they might assist. We will be seeking advice from our partners on all program components, and input on how to make the program a positive experience for the young people that will be served by the Ulster YouthBuild, LLC Kingston Area YouthBuild program. Ulster YouthBuild conducts ongoing recruitment for participants and encourages out of school young people meeting the program eligibility requirements to contact the program at 845-331-2381 for application information. Ulster YouthBuild provides opportunities for young people who are most at risk, to turn their lives around and take control over the direction they are headed. Students of the YouthBuild program have gone on to further their education, work in construction, own their own homes, and become active members in their communities.
John: John came to Ulster YouthBuild in 1997 as a shy high school dropout and father of an infant son at just 16 years old. His father was incarcerated and his relationship with his mother was unstable, John needed help to change the direction of his life. In YouthBuild, John was able to prepare for his High School Equivalency Diploma (HSE) while also receiving practical training in a field that sparked his interest. In NYS you cannot take your HSE exam until the age of 18 unless you are enrolled in a program such as YouthBuild and as a new father, John couldn’t wait. He saw that the skills he was learning in YouthBuild could be applied to a career and began taking the steps to build that career. One year later, at the time of his graduation from YouthBuild, John had earned his HSE Diploma and landed a job as an entry-level carpenter at a local housing construction company. Two years later John returned to YouthBuild to work as the Construction Site Trainer’s assistant and enjoyed working with students who were in similar positions that he once was. John had decided he wanted to open his own construction company and needed more skills. He went on to take an electrical training class and work at a local home heating oil company to gain more experience in his field. In 2003, John opened his own company, Vision Builders, which specializes in residential building, roofing, siding, windows, doors, porches, and decks, John utilizes the skills he honed in YouthBuild including job interview techniques, leadership qualities, customer service, and of course, construction. John credits the skills he learned from YouthBuild with helping him achieve his goals; “During leadership development training, we were coached on how to adapt to different environments, which is important because so much of my job depends on people skills and how I present my services to potential customers. Upon completion of the program, I was well prepared to pursue my goals. Though I encountered setbacks, with the solid foundation I have from YouthBuild, rising up and surpassing those setbacks was a challenge I eagerly accepted.” John is still running his now successful company, owns a house and is the father of 4 children. He proudly credits YouthBuild with helping him to overcome his difficulties and to pursue his dreams. In 2016, John came back to Ulster YouthBuild to take on the position of Construction Site Coordinator. He is giving back to the program and providing excellent housing construction skills to the current trainees as well as being a phenomenal role model for them. Jessica: In 1999 a 19 year old, transient, high school dropout found her way into the Ulster YouthBuild program. Jessica was a runaway at age 16, emancipated by the family court at age 17, living on her own with no way to support herself, and no hope for the future. She came to YouthBuild simply because she wasn’t doing anything else; she was not prepared for what happened next. In YouthBuild Jessica was challenged by the supportive staff to step up and work harder, to do things that she never thought she could. Growing up in an abusive household Jessica never received positive reinforcement and was always led to believe that she was a failure and would never be more than that. Her classroom teacher pushed her and told her she was smart enough to pass her HSE exam, her construction trainer pushed her and told her she could format the design of a house. She didn’t believe them, but they wouldn’t give up so she kept on going and she did both. Through the constant support, the leadership development training, the job readiness training, and the HSE preparation offered at YouthBuild, Jessica began to see her worth and started to accomplish her goals. Jessica graduated from YouthBuild and received her HSE Diploma and went on to obtain a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education. She currently works with “at risk youth” and is an active member of the local Ulster County Youth Council. Jessica credits her success and community involvement to YouthBuild, “The constant support and encouragement of the YouthBuild staff kept me from giving up when I most wanted to. The leadership development training helped me to realize my worth and my potential, it gave me the skills needed to speak up and become an active member in my community. Learning how to write a resume, fill out a job application, or passing an exam is not enough to be successful, you need to have leadership qualities in order to take charge of your life and have the stick-to-itiveness to reach your goals, YouthBuild gave me that.” |