Muncie YouthBuild fostering change in the community

YouthBuild USA is an organization focused on combining construction, education and leadership training for youth, according to the organization’s website.

Since its creation in 1978 in East Harlem, New York, the organization has grown into not only a national movement but a global one. Today, there are over 280 YouthBuild programs worldwide, producing over 51 million hours of community service combined.

“[YouthBuild USA] started to give youth some sort of workforce training, and it has grown over time into different things,” said Ashley Ball director of initiatives at Eastern Indiana Works (EIW). “There’s different programs and different structures, and it looks different everywhere … It just depends on location.”

While the organization has been around for over 40 years, Muncie’s branch of YouthBuild has only begun recently.

Ball said EIW applied for a grant to host a YouthBuild cohort in 2021. She said this decision was based on a need EIW saw in the community: more opportunities for youth to better themselves.

A year after applying for the grant, they were approved and immediately began to bring Muncie YouthBuild to life.

Muncie’s cohort of the program is traditional with construction being the trade learned by participating youth, ages 18-24. Alongside construction, the five-day-a-week program prioritizes time in the classroom to help participants earn their high school diplomas and partake in leadership courses.

“It’s so exciting just getting to meet all of the different participants,” Ball said. “They’re so close to the hope and change that our program offers … I don’t think that they realize that aspect of it. They’re like, ‘Cool, I’ll learn construction and get my high school diploma,’ but, they don’t know how much that can change for them, even within six months.”

For EIW to fully enact its vision for the program, they knew they would need help from local community partners.

To address the leadership part of the program, EIW turned to Shafer Leadership Academy, a local organization that has been operating in Muncie for over 50 years. The academy is dedicated to inclusive leadership development programs for all ages and has an extensive history of providing youth leadership programming.

Shafer’s Program Manager Eilis Wasserman, who works to coordinate programming with EIW, said partnering with YouthBuild was a no-brainer.

“Inclusivity is core to us and also servant leadership. The concept of servant leadership is really woven within YouthBuild, so it’s a great connection,” Wasserman said.

Participants in the YouthBuild program spend two of their seven-hour days in the classroom either focusing on earning their diploma or participating in Shafer-led leadership development workshops.

These workshops range from learning it’s OK to be an “imperfect leader” to understanding the power one holds in “outlining their life” and choosing the story one wants to tell. At a foundational level, Wasserman said the goal of the workshops is to provide participants with skills they can use for a lifetime.

“The diversity of the partnerships and what each partner brings to YouthBuild is what is so powerful and unique … The impact is introducing and really influencing them by providing these foundational skill sets that will help them and guide them,” she said.

Wasserman said each participant and community partner has been extremely resilient in working to bring YouthBuild to life. She said at the end of the day, she is grateful Shafer can meet students where they are and provide facilitation, not just presentation.

On days students are not partaking in leadership programming, they work with educators at the Muncie Area Career Center (MACC) and Ivy Tech Community College.

Kristi Brumley is a retired Muncie Community Schools teacher turned adult educator and works at MACC to help assist with the YouthBuild program. She has been a part of the group for almost three years.

“I taught middle school math for lots of years, so coming to adult ed was a whole different clientele. I just found a passion for that,” Brumley said. “I have adults coming here that just need a second chance. Something didn’t go right the first time around educationally, [but] they’re here, and they’re motivated, and they want to earn their degree.”

Brumley prepares participants for the high school equivalency test and then guides them to earning their diplomas. She said the MACC’s number one goal within the YouthBuild program is to have students earn their diploma in the six months they are in the program or at least make significant progress toward that goal.

“It’s fulfilling to be able to see somebody start at a point with a lot of barriers and a lot of struggles and a lack of confidence and be able to guide them [away from that],” Brumley said. “… We’re going to meet you wherever you are, wherever you come in. I don’t care if you’re at a first-grade reading level or you’re at a 10th-grade math level.”

Alongside this, Brumley helps participants earn their Occupational Safety and Health Administration 10 card and National Center for Construction Education & Research construction credentials, which allow participants to work on the job site during the other half of the program.

They also utilize the Win Career Readiness System from the Department of Workforce Development for a variety of programs they provide. Brumley said ensuring participants understand digital literacy is a big component of what the MACC strives to achieve.

“Those skills transfer to just almost any job where you have face-to-face communication. It works on a lot of the same things that soft skills do, in addition to some other skills,” she said. “… There’s problem-solving, working in teams, how to read body language and how to increase customer satisfaction. Those are all the things that we hope to accomplish.”

The last component of YouthBuild is learning a trade, and Muncies YouthBuild cohort focuses on construction. This is provided by the local company ecoREHAB and is key to the program’s success and structure.

ecoREHAB works with the Muncie Parks Department and also holds “mini partnerships” with Ball State in addition to its work with YouthBuild.

The CEO of ecoREHAB, Jason Haney, said the partnership between the two organizations came to be after each participated in EIW’s Skilled Trades and Education program (STEP).

“We have an amazing network of folks that will drop what they’re doing to help us out,” Haney said via email.

He said his favorite part of participating in YouthBuild is watching participants’ confidence and maturity grow throughout the program.

Each of the three components comes together to create a workweek consisting of five seven-hour days. Cohorts last six weeks, during which participants can participate in a graduation ceremony and celebrate with their family and peers.

Wasserman said YouthBuild has become all that EIW and its partners envisioned.

“This is life empowerment. It’s not just skill training — it goes beyond it and affects holistically, the entire person. … This is a start for a lot of these young folks,” Wasserman said. “… It really comes full circle because there’s so many community partners, and the impact is that we’re better together.”

Contact Trinity Rea via email at [email protected] or on X @thetrinityrea.