Project CRAFT Scores a Decade of Success in Florida
 In a recent letter to NAHB, a teen-aged Florida Project CRAFT student in Orlando expressed his appreciation to Home Builders Institute (HBI), the association’s workforce development arm, for giving him the ability and confidence to leave his “delinquent” ways behind.
Ten years after HBI’s award-winning training program welcomed its first student in Florida, Project CRAFT (Community, Restitution, Apprenticeship-Focused Training) continues to provide adjudicated youths with valuable trade skills and job placement assistance and to support their development into contributing members of the community. Hands-on training, community service and industry involvement are key components of the program and hallmarks of its success. Project CRAFT operates at 10 sites in five states, and has scored an 89% job placement rate among its graduates and reduced their rate of recidivism to 15%, compared to a 50% rate for adjudicated youths nationally. The program is in operation at four sites in Florida, helping young people build careers in Tampa, Orlando, Avon Park and Pembroke Pines through an intensive curriculum of applied academics, trades training and employment skills critical to the job site. Thanks to Project CRAFT training, the student wrote, “I now enthusiastically await my departure from the academy so I can further my skills in the construction field, and I no longer worry about returning to my delinquent ways.” Under the guidance of his HBI instructor, the student has learned to be a safe and productive employee in the construction field; has lined up a pre-apprenticeship; and has set his sights on attending college to earn a degree in civil engineering. Examples like his have contributed to the reputation of Project CRAFT in Florida. A Successful Partnership In 1997, the Avon Park Youth Academy became the first large-scale Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) facility to offer Project CRAFT. It has since transformed the lives of more than 800 adjudicated youths, training 160 students annually and placing 91% in industry jobs, and has been expanded to the other sites in Florida. The success of the partnership between the Department of Juvenile Justice and Project CRAFT was demonstrated this past December when a DJJ employee was consulting with a young electrician who had been called in to make office building repairs. Passing a wall of photos of Avon Park Youth Academy graduates, the electrician stopped and pointed to himself in one of the pictures. An electrical trade graduate from Project CRAFT in 2002, he said that he had been working as an electrician ever since. Tampa, which joined Orlando as an aftercare program in 2001, works closely with Hillsborough County Schools and the Tampa Bay Builders Association (TBBA). Bill Paul, TBBA’s immediate past president and an HBI trustee, has been involved with the program for the past three years. A frequent visitor to Project CRAFT’s Florida sites, he considers the program “one of the best partnerships between the public and private sectors.” He said that “this has to be one of the better investments we can make.” Career Hopes Become Reality Another Project CRAFT student who graduated in Orlando in 2002 and enrolled in the apprenticeship program at the Northeast Florida Builders Association (NEFBA), has recently married and is today working for Amber Electric. And a landscaping graduate from Project CRAFT’s program at Avon Park is now running his own profitable landscaping company. “The program benefits the building industry, true, but it is priceless in what it gives these kids — the skills on which to build a future, the chance to finally have hope,” said Paul. “Can you imagine living without hope? Many of these kids have experienced that. Project CRAFT gives them hope and something more — the opportunity and support to turn their hopes into a reality.” | 
