CSA’s Pre-Apprenticeship Program “Turns Lives Around”

With encouraging words from Odie Donald, Executive Director of DC’s Workforce Investment Council, 17 men and women graduated yesterday from the Community Service Agency’s construction pre-apprenticeship program.  Already, three of the graduates have been accepted into the Cement Mason’s apprenticeship school – where they had their first day of hands-on training last Saturday at the local -- while three more have been accepted into Plumbers Local 5’s program in Lanham.  “You can turn your life around, and this program helps you do it,” said Robert Reese, a previous graduate who had been incarcerated twice before getting into the program and is now making over $29 per hour as an apprentice laborer with LiUNA Local 11. “All it takes is hard work and the will to make something of your life,” Reese told the new graduates. The DC WIC is one of the funders of CSA’s Building Futures program and Donald was so impressed with the graduates he wants a few to come to the next quarterly WIC meeting to show how good training programs can make a difference and “move folks into the middle class and self-sufficiency.”
photo (l-r): Odie Donald, DC WIC Executive Director, Kenneth Dews, graduate accepted into Plumbers Local 5, and Cement Masons’ Instructor Rosella Scott. photo by Silva Casaro

---