Training program in Norristown prepares adult students for apprenticeships

Volunteer tutor Ike Mauel works with Jordan Williams at the Montco OIC pre-apprenticeship program Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. Gene Walsh — The Times Herald

NORRISTOWN >> For young adults who have not gotten the educational boost from high school programs that they need to start their careers, a pre-apprenticeship program for the building trades has already helped eight individuals.

One graduate is in an electrical union apprenticeship program, one is in culinary school and two are attending college, said Aariann Vaughn, the project director of the program. Two other graduates are working in the masonry field and general construction. The last two graduates are working in other fields, she said.

“The goal of the program is to get these students ready for life and to gain life skills if they are entering into the building trades,” Vaughn said.

Five instructors and a job developer run the 16- to 20-week training program with three classes each year at the Montgomery County Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) on Arch Street.

Harique Brown, 20, of Lansdale, recently graduated from the program and is enrolled in a two-week union training class for construction work. If he passes a March test given by the union, he will be able to enter a four-year apprenticeship program, he said.

“I learned about marketing myself,” Brown said. “I gained a lot of life skills in the program.”

Brown graduated from Norristown Area High School in 2012 and is currently working as a server at Red Lobster. Many of the participants in the pre-apprentice training program, which runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each workday, have part-time or full-time jobs, as well.

The current class, which began Jan. 18, has eight students, including four from Norristown, two from Lansdale, one from Cheltenham and one from Ambler.

The class includes six men and two women. One student is getting remedial math and reading instruction in the evenings.

The training program started in 2013 with a partial class at the end of the year. There were three classes in 2014 and a similar number are planned for this year.

The classroom instruction in Norristown is supplemented with six to eight one-day visits to the union apprenticeship programs. Those will begin in mid-February for this class, Vaughn said. The union programs include plumbing, industrial painters, sheet metal, carpenters, boilermakers, elevator contractors, insulators, roofers, electricians, operating engineers, bricklayers, cement masons and plasterers. The requests of the class members influence which union programs are visited by each class.

The Laborers’ International Union of North America, Local 135, in Norristown, co-sponsors the training class with the Montgomery County OIC.

A three-year grant from the state Department of Labor started at $110,000 in the first year and ramped up to more than $200,000 in the second year, said Denise Ashe, the executive director of the Montgomery County OIC. A new application has to be made each year for the grant, which is administered by the Montgomery County Department of Commerce.

The pre-apprenticeship program trains the students on taking and succeeding at passing the union’s apprenticeship tests. Those tests are typically held twice a year at different intervals, said Vaughn.

Linda Bear, the community outreach job development specialist, routinely visits the Norristown Area, Pottstown and Cheltenham school districts along with private schools like Wyncote Academy in Cheltenham and the Lakeside Education Network in Horsham looking for prospective students.

“Life skills are very important in the program,” Vaughn said. “That is major. We also work on their connection to their communities and finding the leader in yourself.”

Source: The Times Herald