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SA Youth Construction

To combat our city’s 50% dropout rate, SA Youth provides recovery opportunities for young adults seeking a second chance in life. In partnership with SAISD, SA Youth offers three pathways for success: Construction, Technology and Environment, all leading to green jobs certification.SA Youth’s dropout recovery and workforce training programs are aligned with the mission of YouthBuild USA. SA Youth is a full affiliate.

SA Youth’s YouthBuild construction pathway is a full service, wraparound program that provides education and job training over the course of a one to two year period for high school dropouts.

The goal is that every person who previously quit school will walk across a stage afterprogram completion, with a diploma or GED or High School Diploma in one hand, and a workforce certification in the other.

During the 40-hour a week program, participants spend 20 hours a week working toward gaining a GED or High School Diploma and 16 hours a week working on gaining a Construction Certification. The remaining hours are spent toward community service and leadership training.

Workforce Preparedness
Through the construction of the YouthBuild Verde Homes, participants gain real work skills. In the classroom, under the guidance and direction of a construction team, participants also learn construction concepts using the Home-Builders’ Institute (HBI) PACT training curriculum. This curriculum offers participants an opportunity to earn various credentials that make them more employable in the construction industry.

GED Program or High School Credit Recovery
Participants prepare for the GED over the course of the program under the guidance of a GED instructor who serves as academic advisors to the participants, or the participant may be enrolled in the Cooper YouthBuild Academy, a program collaboration with San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD).

Using an innovative online curriculum known as Plato, participants work at their own accelerated pace to maximize their learning and prepare for each GED test or to recover high school credits. After a participant has pre-tested, instructors will sign up the participant for testing at a GED testing site, or participants in High School Credit Recovery will gain credits as they progress. GED instructors or high school recovery staff integrate construction knowledge throughout the program to further reinforce concepts being learned on the job-site.

DUAL College Credit
Through a special partnership with Alamo Colleges, St. Philip’s College-Southwest Campus, SA Youth is able to afford participants the opportunity to gain core college credit in a variety of subjects. Participants can work toward gaining their GED or High School Diploma, a workforce certification AND a college credit at the same time!

Leadership Training
Through SA Youth, we create an environment in which young people and staff can learn, feel valued and cared for, make good decisions, and grow in their self-development, knowledge, skill, and leadership. SA Youth provides many opportunities for young adults to become engaged and learn how to be effective leaders.

We emphasize leadership development at SA Youth for four reasons:

  1. The future of our society and all our communities depends on having more ethical and effective leaders.
  2. Every youth program and school would itself be improved if governed with real input from young people.
  3. Leadership can engage young people intensely and deeply, liberating their own best energies.
  4. Real decision-making responsibility can help heal two deep wounds of young people: Low self-esteem due to consistent invalidation of their intelligence; and feelings of powerlessness, and the companion anger, due to being raised in a thoroughly adult-dominated world, which has not listened to the ideas of young people.

Every Friday, SA Youth staff and our Leadership Council plan a leadership training day where special programs are developed and implemented that center around the principles of leadership.

While in the SA Youth recovery program, participants have the opportunity to serve on a Leadership Council. The Council is elected from the SA Youth population and meets with the SA Youth Program Director each week. The Council is charged with making important decisions about the program. Decisions include disciplinary actions, community service programs, policy decisions, and other programmatic decisions.

Using YouthBuild USA’s Blueprint for Democracy curriculum, SA Youth participants learn how to be civic-minded individuals. The curriculum is designed specifically to address the needs and attitudes of low-income youth, including alienation from politics and politicians; the legal status of former felons; and issues affecting poor people such as welfare policies, civil rights policies, and campaign finance reform. Activities ask teachers to start with the students’ experiences, feelings, knowledge, and concerns.

Case Management
All participants receive the support of a full-time case manager who helps participants find needed resources such as counseling, food, housing, rent assistance, and access to other social service programs. The case manager also works with participants to help place them in full-time jobs that align with their interests and skills.

Community Service Learning
During the year, all students engage in community service learning and participation in various community service programs around the City of San Antonio. These may include serving food to the homeless, working at the Food Bank, building wheel chair ramps for the disabled, repairing an elderly person’s home, painting a mural, and many other projects. The community service component is a way to reconnect youth to their communities through “doing.” In the process of changing their own lives, students knock down barriers to their development and remove negative stereotypes about out-of-school youth.

The program also provides leadership and community service activities for the participants. During the program, youth are successfully rebuilding their own lives while rebuilding the community through housing rehabilitation for low-income residents in San Antonio.

SA Youth is proud to be a full affiliate of YouthBuild USA. For more information about our national YouthBuild program, visit the YouthBuild USA website at www.youthbuild.org

SA Youth’s construction pathway is a full service, wraparound program that provides education and job training over the course of a one to two year period for high school dropouts. The program also provides leadership and community service activities for the participants. During the program, youth are successfully rebuilding their own lives while rebuilding the community through housing rehabilitation for low-income residents in San Antonio.

For more information about YouthBuild, visit the national website at www.youthbuild.org.

For more information about enrolling our Construction Pathway, download the application and supporting materials.