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Come September, the city’s low-income youth that have dropped out of high school may have a chance to earn their high school equivalency diplomas while learning job skills and building affordable housing in the city.

City resident Arnold Faulhaber has been working with Roselle-based nonprofit group Prevention Links to secure grant funding for a YouthBuild USA program in Asbury Park. The grant application is being sent through today to the U.S. Department of Labor. It will take about two months to process before any funding is allocated, he said.

YouthBuild programs allow low-income youth ages 16 to 24 to work full time for 6 to 24 months toward their GEDs or high school diplomas while learning job skills by building affordable housing in their communities, according to their website. At exit, they are placed in college, jobs, or both.

For the past few weeks, Faulhaber has been collecting letter of support to submit with the grant application. Once the grant application is submitted, Faulbaher will be begin to reach out to residents to help him urge Congressman Frank Pallone and Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker to support allocation of the grant funding to Asbury Park.

“If all goes well, we would be up and running by September,” said Faulhaber. “Which is perfect because it coincides with the start of the school year — that is the vision.”

Faulhaber, a 1971 graduate of Asbury Park High School, is the director of the Asbury Park regional re-entry coalition, a group that works to assist incarcerated individuals as they transition back into their communities after they are released.

He was contacted by Prevention Links to spread the word about the program and gain support from the community.

Prevention Links will be the fiscal and programmatic managers of the program but will look to root the program in the community, said Pamela Capaci, executive director of the nonprofit.

The group is in negotiations with the Asbury Park unit of the Boys and Girls Clubs to use space in the club at the program’s start, Capaci said.

The club also owns the old Kneips Bakery building, located just across the street from the club, which needs rehabilitation [shown at top]. YouthBuild participants may have the chance to work on the building as part of their training, and once the building is finished the program could operate out of a space in that location, Faulhaber said.

“The Boys and Girls Clubs of Monmouth County has always focused on empowering young people to take advantage of life’s opportunities,” said Executive Director Douglas Eagles. “When Prevention Links approached me and pitched their idea of bringing YouthBuild to Asbury Park, I was thrilled. This would be another vehicle through which we could equip our young people for success.”

Prevention Links has successfully partnered with organizations in the City of Elizabeth to bring the YouthBuild program there, but would be the lead organization in the Asbury Park effort, Capaci said, providing technical support and fiscal responsibility to bring what Capaci believes is a model that would be successful to at-risk kids in Asbury Park.

The Elizabeth grant focuses on serving 70 kids annually and the program has enough success stories to have been refunded multiple times, Capaci said.

“It’s a great program,” said Faulhaber. “It should be brought in to town.”

“What I like about this program is, it offers the youth educational training, but it also gives them skills … they want to see what they are dong is going to lead to income,” Capaci said. “In order to get the stipend, they have to participate with the academic portion of the program. In addition, they earn a lot of life skills training and leadership training.”

YouthBuild is a federally funded program that was started in 1992 under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Since 2006, it has been funded through the U.S. Department of Labor, according to the website. Over $1.2 billion in grants and contracts have been awarded to local community, faith-based nonprofit organizations, and local government entities since the program’s inception.

There are currently 273 YouthBuild programs in 46 states, Washington D.C., and the Virgin Islands, the website states.

For more information on Prevention Links, visit preventionlinks.org. For more information about the YouthBuild program, visit YouthBuild.org.

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