BUILDing a new life

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2016 (3544 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a kid, he stole cars and was told he’d never get a driver’s licence until he repaid Autopac for thousands in damages. As an adult, he committed crimes and was sent to jail on gun charges.

When Darcy Vaughan got out, the aboriginal man with a criminal record and no driver’s licence could never have imagined he’d be a carpenter’s apprentice and family man driving his own vehicle to work every day and having everything to live for.

“I’ve got so much to lose now,” said Vaughan, holding his 10-month-old daughter, Delilah. The turning point for the 29-year-old was getting into BUILD after getting out of jail the second time.

The social enterprise — Building Urban Industries for Local Development — equips people who’ve been in jail or are at risk of going to jail with life skills, job skills and help in getting driver’s licences.

“I was overwhelmed with everything,” said Vaughan, who left school in Grade 9. “They understood that.” Trainees take part in a six-month program that includes learning life skills, money management and driver training, carpentry skills and getting work experience while being tutored.

People such as Vaughan with little chance of finding legitimate work once they’re out of jail are getting job skills and a chance at decent-paying work. The province has said it needs skilled workers and to harness the potential of its growing aboriginal population.

“There are people who want to work, and there’s work to be done, but there was nothing to connect the two,” said Shaun Loney, the former executive director of BUILD, which began in 2006. It’s located at the Social Enterprise Centre at 765 Main St., in a renovated warehouse, and was set up to solve several problems. Uninsulated homes in the North End and inner city meant high energy bills for people in low-income areas. High unemployment in those areas was contributing to high rates of gang violence and people ending up in and out of jail.

BUILD was established to improve low-income housing while training residents about for-profit businesses, with the company’s profits plowed back into training and creating more jobs.

“Our best conservative estimate is that 400 people have left BUILD and gone on directly either to employment or trades-based education,” said Loney.

“It’s not known, our exact numbers, because people are on their own when they leave, and we don’t have dollars to track them,” he said. Loney said the government estimates of the people who stayed in BUILD for one month, 80 per cent “successfully exited” to another job or trades-based education, and fewer than 20 per cent drop out in the first month.

The program could have even better success rates, but it wouldn’t be accessing the right demographic, said Loney.

“The folks BUILD brings on are ‘multiple-barriered,’ and we don’t shy away from a challenge. Justice officials are amazed we turn around as many as we do,” said Loney.

Vaughan is a prime example. Instead of taking cars, at BUILD he was taking two buses every day to get to classes. When was hired on at BUILD as an apprentice he was making close to $20 an hour, and BUILD helped him arrange to pay back Autopac so he could get his driver’s licence — a requirement for most entry-level jobs now.

“I was told I was barred for life from ever having a driver’s licence — that I would have to work a lifetime to get it,” Vaughan recalled. Half of each paycheque went to Autopac, but he paid the debt, got his licence and now drives his own truck to work at a construction site in St. Boniface. He’s apprenticing with Flatland Carpentry and doing work that fascinates him. Vaughan shows cellphone photos of the rammed-earth house they’re building and the processes involved and is happy to be doing the work and learning a trade.

His success in the program helped heal the rift between him and his family, he said. It gave him the self-confidence to form healthy relationships. He and his partner, Jenna-May Maynes, who works in retail, have 10-month-old Delilah. While tickling the baby’s chubby bare feet until she laughed, Vaughan said there’s no turning back to crime.

“This is the reason.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca