“It was a blessing finding this program. It will help me travel and work where I want,” said Robert Rice, 21, who enrolled in the OIC program after working at a convenience store, a food distribution facility and a couple of restaurants.
OIC, 10 S. Yellow Springs St., is a nonprofit organization that serves various populations, offering adult services in gaining job skills and employment and alternative learning opportunities for high school students. The organization also administers the Ohio Department of Development’s Home Energy Assistance Program.
As part of the current training program, students are working on a remodeling project on a house at 1329 Pythian Ave.
The California-style bungalow, built in 1911, was purchased by OIC for two reasons.
“This helps students see the value of their work in a greater sense. They can see that they are not only building or repairing structures, but helping to better communities,” said OIC executive director Mike Calabrese.
The house was an abandoned foreclosure that OIC purchased for about $30,000, which will be recouped when the property is sold.
“We did not want to go into a declining neighborhood, but looked for a declining house in a stable neighborhood. ...This helps our students gain important experience, helps stabilize the neighborhood and puts an affordable house back on the market,” Calabrese said.
The reality of the situation
Many of the students in the construction trades program have struggled with traditional schooling and training. They also may have struggled holding other jobs.
“These kids come from difficult situations, but they see this as a way up and out,” Calabrese said.
There are six students participating in the program, which lasts for about nine weeks. OIC provides the students with basic tools, work boots and other necessary equipment; student are paid $50 per week to help with food and transportation expenses.
“Attrition can be a problem, because some kids face life issues that require they leave the program and others are not able to adapt to the rules and procedures. ...The ones that hang in there do so because they see they can learn something here that can be applied to a career,” said Howard Sothard, construction trades program supervisor.
Sothard spent 25 years with the Springfield Police Division and has been at OIC for three years. He started in the organization’s ex-offenders program before shifting to his current position.
Many of his students are inexperienced and have not been exposed to the tools and processes used in construction trades industries.
“So, we start out with the very basics. We teach them to read a rule and how to do the math functions necessary to do the job. ...You can not be promoted in the construction trades industry unless you have a strong base in math,” he said.
Classroom and on-site training focus heavily on math, with Sothard teaching traditional math skills and visual recognition of things like lumber sizes.
“It’s common-sense workplace knowledge,” he said.
Practical skills including drywalling, framing walls and safely operating power tools are taught, “but most importantly,” Sothard said, “they learn a strong work ethic.”
Other soft skills — arriving on time, dressing appropriately, demonstrating an acceptable attitude and proper communication — are also taught during the course of the training.
“On the first day, some of them straggled in around 9 or 9:15 (a.m.) for an 8:30 start time, but now they’re here on time. You can see their attitudes change as the weeks go by. ...These are good kids — they’re interested in learning,” Sothard said.
The group spent a month in the classroom before they went out to the job site for the first time, officially, on Wednesday, July 14.
The students — Rice, Jody Duncan, Jon Johnson, James Upshaw, Taylor Jackson and Ryan Parker — spent time prior to that helping to tear some things out.
“This is their very first day of putting something back together,” Sothard said of the students’ work building a deck at the back entrance to the house.
The house and another project
The Pythian Avenue project has no firm completion date as it will be an on-going project for the construction trades students, Calabrese said.
When it hits the market, the four bedroom, two bathroom house will have approximately 2,500 square feet of living space that will include an eat-in kitchen and first-floor master suite.
The finished house will have new heating and cooling equipment, all new doors and windows, new plumbing and electrical wiring, and 200-amp electrical service, all of which students will have a hand in.
“There will be little original left beyond the basement, foundation and outside walls, but they’re all in good shape. This is a solid house,” Sothard said.
Many of the materials used in the house have been donated by Home Depot through its corporate Giving In Kind program.
The program is a community product donation program for nonprofit organizations through which they receive home improvement products and building supplies no longer available for sale in Home Depot stores.
Calabrese said when the project is completed, there will be about $10,000 of donated materials, including lumber, other building materials, carpeting and other flooring surfaces.
The construction trades students are also helping rehabilitate the former Dills Supply Building at 26 S. Yellow Springs St., which OIC recently purchased.
“We bought the building for more classroom space and we will move the Home Energy Assistance Program office there,” Calabrese said.
The new facility will increase OIC’s available space by about 4,000 square feet with about 1,800 being utilized for HEAP offices. The remainder will be used for classrooms for training programs such as construction trades, precision machining and auto build.
“Our high school has taken so much of our facility here that we needed more space,” Calabrese said. The OIC high school program serves about 120 students per year from area high schools.
The work at both construction sites is helping the students prepare for what they see as careers instead of jobs.
The young men worked a mish-mash of jobs that included fast food, retail, janitorial and truck loading.
“I wanted a career I could take with me anywhere,” Duncan said, “and now I hope I’ll be able to build a house I can live in someday.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0371 or elroberts@coxohio.com.
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