Project Builds Where Hope Seems to Have Disappeared

Vincent Woods was sliding into economic quicksand. A poor, urban, black dropout, he faced the almost certain statistical probability that he would join the murky subculture of long-term welfare, crime and despair that is America’s underclass.

Woods, forced to leave high school at 17 to raise his sister and brother while his mother served time for drug charges, was overwhelmed by the prospect of raising Starmika, 2, and Baraka, 9. A poor reader who lacked skills, he had no hope for work.

The three children, who had done nothing worse than grow up in an economically depressed neighborhood in Watts, were on their way down. But all that began to change, Woods said, the day three years ago he received a flyer for Project BUILD, a program created by Assemblywoman Maxine Waters to tackle long-term unemployment and undereducation in the inner city.

“The day I walked out of Project BUILD, my life seemed different,” he said. Today, at 23, Woods is earning a high school equivalency diploma. He has been awarded $550 in community college scholarships, and last month was offered a job as a teacher’s aide.

“$8.50 an hour--can you believe that?” Woods said, shaking his head. “Imagine what I can do with a college degree.”

Reaching the Unreachable

For three years, state-funded Project BUILD has quietly been casting its net deep into the city’s isolated poor black neighborhoods, recapturing poverty-stricken adults who had given up on themselves and society. While other government programs offer job training to people who know what they want, this is the one government-funded inner-city program in Los Angeles whose simple goal is to “wake up” those who are adrift, and push them into action.

Working from storefront-style offices in public housing projects, counselors offer up an intense four-day seminar, coaching participants on how to compete for a job and plan forays into the unfamiliar working world. Speakers whip up participants with shouts of “Good morning!” and lecture on such basics as dressing neatly and always being at work on time. Participants must learn to complete a mistake-free job application, a task some find arduous.

But it doesn’t end there. Each recruit is given a counselor who may spend weeks, sometimes months, guiding him toward a school, a training program or a job opening.

At the heart of the program is Waters, a Democrat and powerful advocate for the poor who believes that the poorest among us are so estranged from the mainstream that they are cut off from the very agencies created to help them.

Two weeks ago, between meetings with other key supporters of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Waters ducked out of her Los Angeles district office to deliver a motivational talk to recruits at Project BUILD. Making her way through the crowd at a local gym, she stopped to chat with a young single mother, warmly wrapping her arm about the woman’s shoulders. Later, Waters often telephones those she has met to see what progress they have made.

‘We Hug Them’

“They get my call and they say, ‘This is who? Miss Waters? Are you really calling me?’ ” Waters said, chuckling. “And I’ll tell you why I do it,” she said. “I do it because we get people out of their rollers and their slippers. We drag them out of their apartments, we hug them, we make them come alive. . . . We know that these are fine people, but they are trapped people.”

Classes are held at housing projects and a local school on a rotating basis so residents need not cross unfriendly gang boundaries. Participants are paid a $10 daily stipend for child-care or personal needs--a strategy Waters said has attracted hundreds of people.

Recruits are tested for educational levels and told where they need to improve. At role-playing seminars, they learn to deal with a boss. And counselors spell out the unwritten rules, from the social pitfalls of borrowing money on the job to the problems of complaining to co-workers.

“OK, let’s say you have an unhappy married life,” said Rochelle Davis, a counselor speaking to a class a few weeks ago. “This is where your husband stayed out all night and he’s on crack (cocaine). Now, don’t share that with people at your new job. Leave your personal problems behind.”

There is reality here. And there is pride.

On the final day, job trainers, employers and educational recruiters show up to meet the graduates. Recently, a recruiter from the Drew Medical Magnet School surveyed the crowd, including several active gang members, and boomed into the microphone: “I’m so happy to see so many young men out there--black men!” setting off a boisterous round of cheers.

Sonny Walker, executive director of the program, said that for many, “This is the first thing they have ever completed in their lives. We award them a certificate, and you wouldn’t believe how many put it up on their walls.”

In three years, the crew of 15 counselors, recruiters and one teacher has given certificates to more than 2,000 people ranging in age from 16 to 70. Walker said that about 325 now have jobs, more than 250 are pursuing high school equivalency diplomas and more than 600 are attending training or educational programs.

Finds Baby-Sitters

Claudia Moore, Walker’s assistant, said that with its $350,000 annual budget, Project BUILD provides those who need it with bus fares to work or school, acts as an advocate in meetings with social workers and even finds baby-sitters for mothers facing job interviews.

“Once you join Project BUILD, you are with us for life,” Walker said. “If you get work but find yourself back on the street later, you can call us and we’ll help plug you into the connections you need. We tell people: ‘You are family.’ ”

Mona Lisa Harris and her sister, Veronica McKneely, are still a bit dazed over how quickly they found work because of Project BUILD.

Harris, 26, a single welfare mother who was a clerical worker before her toddler was born, said she was “amazed to find myself in a job interview, asking them the questions and not nervous at all, just like I learned at Project BUILD. And you know what? The interviewer hired me on the spot.”

Her new job as a $450-a-week clerical worker at GTE in Mission Hills is a three-hour bus ride from home. But, Harris said, “this time I’m sitting around for good reason. I’ve got a job with a future.”

McKneely, 34, had not worked in seven years. But in April, she was hired as a recruiter for Project BUILD after the counselors saw her speak at a neighborhood meeting. Impressed, they promptly recommended the buoyant woman for an in-house position.

“It’s a joy to have a job, a joy,” McKneely said.

Project BUILD has earned the admiration of educators and neighborhood leaders, but it is still something of an orphan. Despite enthusiastic backing from Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents Watts, the program has aroused little interest among policy makers at City Hall, Walker said. Waters complains that few of the city’s major employers have stepped forward to offer training opportunities or entry-level jobs.

“Project BUILD gets people all pumped up for work, but there aren’t many jobs waiting at the end, so it’s kind of like running them to the edge of a cliff,” said one city official who asked not to be named. “I don’t want to sound heartless, but it’s best to go after the youth. For the older ones, it’s just too late.”

Waters utters a string of unprintable expletives when confronted with such notions.

“We meet people who have been so beaten down by poor upbringing and bad surroundings, and have such a low-level tolerance for dealing with things like unemployment offices and filling out forms, that they don’t even try,” Waters said. “ They need our help.”

Turned Off by Obstacles

She said the Private Industry Council and the city, which oversee $42 million a year in federal Job Training Partnership Act funds, have such low visibility in the area and offer programs with so many obstacles--such as long waiting periods to qualify for job-training classes--that the already discouraged don’t bother to apply.

“They don’t do a damn thing to bring jobs to inner-city people who are in the most trouble,” she said. “And with so many prosperous businesses that should be giving something back to the city, that’s a crime.”

According to a report by the state Job Training Coordinating Council, companies and centers using JTPA funds to train the poor are under pressure to place students quickly. As a result, the report said, a process called “creaming” occurs in which the most easily employable people--high school graduates, those not on welfare, and the skilled--get the most attention.

Bill Bruce, of the city Community Development Department, said JTPA programs have successfully trained thousands, including Project BUILD graduates and many inner-city residents. But, he said, efforts are spread thin to serve a citywide group that, under law, must include a representative mix of welfare recipients, the handicapped, ex-offenders, dropouts and all minority groups.

“We get only enough money to supply help to about 5% of those who need it,” Bruce said. “So how do you reach the chronically unemployed, poverty-stricken welfare culture in the inner city? I don’t know.”

Abdul Husani, a recruiter from Los Angeles Southwest College’s vocational education center, which regularly seeks out graduates from Project BUILD, said he believes city officials have abandoned the poor in the South-Central area.

“The racial isolation here does a lot of harm, and we desperately need a lot more elected officials like Maxine Waters who come into the community and are seen and heard here on a regular basis,” he said.

“A lot of our black leaders have gotten into city offices and then forgotten about the poor, really sold us out for 30 pieces of silver,” Husani said. “You don’t see them down here, pushing innovations, trying to change things.”

Nate Holden, a black councilman, said part of the problem is that the City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley rarely tackle social problems as a team, instead pursuing a patchwork of small programs that differ from district to district.

Waters said the problem goes even deeper.

“The bureaucrats don’t know what I’m talking about,” she bristled. “They think all you’ve got to do is connect these people with job training or school. The amazing thing we’ve learned at Project BUILD is that you have to first get these people to believe they have a shred of control over their environment or they won’t take one step. That’s why we hug them and tell them we care.”

Unorthodox Methods, Clients

Project BUILD’s approach is not exactly orthodox, but then the students are not exactly mainstream. Many of the adults cannot read beyond grade-school level, and some cannot compute the change they are due back from a purchase in a store.

Such knowledge gaps are not surprising. State reading and math test scores of twelfth-graders in South-Central Los Angeles are consistently among the lowest in California. The drop-out rate is well over 50%, and school officials say only a tiny fraction of inner-city students ever get a college degree.

Hope Taylor, a longtime educator in South-Central public schools, said the schools are crippled by parental disinterest, frustrated and uninspired teachers and children with deep behavioral and social scars unique to the inner city.

“I compare inner-city education to a hidden crime, a tearing away at children for years and years, that they do not suspect until they grow up and find they cannot complete a job application,” she said.

Project BUILD has hired its own teacher, Sharmen Taylor, who offers remedial reading and math to a small class of earnest adults.

Rosetta Daniels, 25, has been a student in Taylor’s class at the Nickerson Gardens housing project since January, when she attended Project BUILD. She said her inability to read has trapped her in poverty-level jobs, including one as a janitor and another as a fry cook.

“I never had anyone to tell me to take school seriously, not my mom, no one,” said Daniels, who hopes to educate herself and one day own a store. “Maybe that’s why I turned out the way I am.”

According to Walker and Waters, even the educated Project BUILD participants--and there are many who did well in school--face barriers to success that are hard to escape in inner city Los Angeles.

For one thing, more than 60% of the children in inner-city black neighborhoods are raised by single mothers, a phenomenon that is a leading cause of poverty.

“I thought I was taking the easy way out in life, having babies and just being a mom,” said Lakita Williams, 24, a mother of two who has often relied on welfare. “But now I look at my little girl, and I don’t want her to have it this way.”

Williams attended the Project BUILD seminar in June with her best friend, Annie McKnight, 28. The two women were looking for a way to change their lives.

McKnight dreams of attending Los Angeles Southwest College to become a teacher’s aide. But, like most poor mothers, she cannot pay a baby-sitter. Waters plans to build a local child-care center to help such women.

“You know,” McKnight said, “when I had my kids, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and now I’m so sorry. Even getting ready for the school year takes me months, buying a piece of clothes here, another there, always on sale. I’ve put aside my own dreams.”

Nevertheless, women tend to be more successful in Project BUILD than men, according to the program’s counselors, perhaps because mothers feel a greater anxiety about their childrens’ futures.

Image, Past Are Barriers

Jim Barr, the head counselor at Project BUILD, said some men face “tremendous barriers” because they are ex-offenders. Others, encouraged by peers and family to view themselves as street-tough survivors, cannot reconcile their self-images with their inability to enter the “seemingly easy” workaday world, he said.

“We’ve got really sharp young men, but they carry big chips on their shoulders, in order to defend themselves against the inevitable failures,” Barr said. “We’re trying to give them hope of success so they lose that chip.”

One person they hope to help is Michael Hall, 32, an affable, articulate man who has struggled to get on his feet since his release from prison four months ago. He served nearly four years for manslaughter related to a drug deal.

“I’ve got a friend who’s in for life without possibility of parole, and another with a double life sentence,” Hall said quietly, holding his Project BUILD certificate. “I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Earlier that day, a jubilant Hall had grabbed the microphone during the graduation ceremonies, shouting out to the gymnasium full of people: “Give yourselves a round of applause!” The place went wild.

Hall hopes that through Project BUILD he can find a training program for disc jockeys, although he never graduated from high school. But, he reasoned, he used to spend 18 hours a day selling drugs on the streets.

“If I can do that,” Hall said, “I can work--and work hard.”