Norman Palmer watched the family move into the house he helped build, stood there as they put the key in the door. And a feeling washed over him that at first felt quite strange.
He was proud of something he’d done.
“I saw this great smile on their faces,’’ Norman says. “It was a great feeling, to know I helped with that. It was the first time in my life I felt like I really accomplished something.”
Norman, 18, is one of 400 young adults who had either dropped out or been kicked out of high school (or were at high risk of doing so) who found a way to a degree and a better life thanks to Chester YouthBuild. Started in 1993, Chester YouthBuild provides academic instruction, counseling and job training to the Chester-Upland community’s most economically and socially vulnerable young adults.
Eligible participants are between the ages of 17-24, and most come to Chester YouthBuild with significant obstacles in front of them. Of Chester YouthBuild’s students, 90 percent live below the poverty level, 70 percent are from single-parent homes, 35 percent are single parents themselves, 40 percent have had “some criminal involvement” and 20 percent are or have been homeless.
Even in this harsh landscape, an astonishing 67 percent of the students who enter the program attain a GED or diploma, and Chester YouthBuild successfully places 80 percent of students who complete the program in jobs or post secondary education or advanced training programs.
“I got kicked out of Camden High for fighting,’’ Chrystal Mottas says. “I was sitting at home, watching TV. I’d pretty much given up. I was not going to go back to school. I looked a mess. I didn’t want to go to the High; I knew I was going to have problems there. I wanted to get my education, but I didn’t know how.
“I was driving past this little building on the side of the road with my friend. You wouldn’t even notice it if you weren’t looking for it, but she said, ‘I’m going there; I’m getting my GED.’ So one day, I walked in the door and said: Hey, can I try this?”
Chrystal is now on pace to graduate, with an industry-recognized certification in fiber optics.
“I feel like I finally have teachers who actually care,’’ she says. “They give you individual help; they’re really trying to help you, to make it easier for you. I’d never gotten a B in my life until I got one here. I saw a B on my report card and thought: Oh, my God! I took that report card home and hung it up on the wall. I look at it and I know somebody out there actually cares about me achieving my goals.”
Chester YouthBuild is an intensive nine-month program consisting of education, vocational training, counseling, life skills development and career development.
“I wasn’t going to stay in school,’’ Norman says. “I didn’t like it. It was difficult; I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. There were fights every day. There was no way I was staying.
“This is a nice place to learn. I feel like I’m accomplishing my goals. I always wanted to learn. And here it feels like I can. Here, you have to go to class. There’s no place to roam. The teachers here, they take time to listen to you. When you have a problem, you can ask them anything. When they say they’re here to help you, they really mean it.’’
The vocational instruction at Chester YouthBuild involves construction training, which occurs at actual housing construction sites around the city transforming abandoned or boarded-up properties into new homes. There are also business, computer and communications disciplines in which students can gain industry-recognized certification.
“I dropped out of high school after I got pregnant,’’ Rose Marie Rodriguez says. “One day I just walked in, just walked in off the street.
“I had to adjust to a smaller school. And I was not used to a teacher who, when you raised your hand, would be right there helping you. Any question you have a problem with, they’re there for you. I never understood math before. So many numbers; it was just not for me. But they help you understand it – and now math is my favorite subject. They won’t leave you until you get it. It’s a pleasure to be here.”
Rose Marie wants to get into police work and notes that Chester YouthBuild expands on the classroom work by providing career development support. She laughs and says: “I have a resume now. I never knew you had to have a resume.”
I don’t want to be that person I was before,’’ Rose Marie said. “I want to be the role model that my daughter deserves – someone who, when her friends ask what her mom does, she can be proud of the answer.
“I was wasting my life. I wasn’t going to school. I mean, I was enrolled, but I wasn’t going. Coming here has turned my whole life around. They push you. You don’t come to school, they call you to make sure you’re OK. One day I happened to mention that my daughter was sick. The teacher called me at home to ask how she was. They care. They really care. We’re like family here.’’
That is one of the great pleasures of Chester YouthBuild, says program director Donna Northern – watching the students take ownership of their situation, and their new school.
“They have to decide whether they want to commit,’’ Northern says. “It’s not for everyone. We place a lot of demands on them. It’s not easier here. We demand more. We know you; we know if you leave. You can’t just walk though this place.
“To see the kids change, to see them come in here raising hell, and then you see them leave and see what they’ve become, that’s the biggest joy. This is their environment, their community, their house. They make it their own.”
Along the way, they turn around lives that were headed down a dangerous path.
“My younger brother is incarcerated,’’ Chrystal says. “That’s where I’d be now, if I hadn’t come here. He writes me and tells me he’s proud of me, and that makes me feel so good. I realize now I’d been setting a bad example for him all those years.
But now he’s seen me go back to school, and he says he wants to be like me. When I heard him say that, it made me cry.”