Corps work creates routine for high school dropouts

The four-man crew — quiet, adjusting to the waking world — assembles at dawn. It will be a hot day. They will work in City Heights sweeping streets, replacing trash can liners, trimming trees, and painting over graffiti.

The crew — teen and 20-something student workers with the Urban Corps — does this Monday through Thursday and spends Friday in the classroom. It is a routine.

Routine is important, says Luis Cruz, a 50-something supervisor for the City Heights group.

A daily agenda is what the corps members need: a path and a goal; discipline and consequence and reward.

The Urban Corps is a 20-year-old nonprofit that gives paid work experience opportunities to high school dropouts and immigrant students who have little or no job training. The work – environmental projects, recycling, community improvement contracts and urban forestry, among them – connects the corps members to local neighborhoods, and emphasizes civic responsibility.

The corps also gives high school dropouts a second chance at a diploma and it gives refugee students ESL classes and a start in a new country. More than 1,300 corps members have earned their high school diplomas. Students also participate in the Corps-to-Career program that keeps educational, career and personal goals on track, and teaches flexibility and leadership.

“I try to give them life advice,” Cruz says. “Something they can use.”

The day, the hot day, the crew assembles and Cruz drives the corps men to the work site. He gives them direction before sending them to work: safety first, be diligent and do more than is expected.

Rafaat Esho, a crew member and an Iraqi expatriate, remembers something the supervisor taught him. “Mister,” he says. “Self-motivation?”

“Yes, Rafaat,” Cruz says, satisfied. “Self-motivation; be self-motivated.”

Cruz seems pleased. It’s sinking in, the routine and the work ethic. The service Urban Corps provides youth — beyond employment and education — is routine; structure for young men and women who need it. Urban Corps is a new start, a second chance.

When Cecilia Villatoro immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s, the Urban Corps provided her a foundation for college and a career. Now, she works full-time teaching English and ESL to new corps members and mentoring them; giving back what she was given. “Maybe,” she says, “that second chance is the last chance they’ll have.”

‘I have to fight every day’

Joe Carreon shows his scars; small, indistinguishable marks on both his forearms, the remnants of a kicked heroin addiction that started when he was 15, the same year he started dealing crystal methamphetamine, and about the same time he dropped out of high school.

There was no routine for young Carreon. His family bounced around, following his addict dad from prison to prison. His mother was a meth addict, too. When the family settled in El Centro, Carreon started using.

He stopped going to school, and petty theft landed him in and out of juvenile hall, then jail. At 20, a commercial burglary charge landed him three and a half years in prison. He served a year and a half. He completed a rehabilitation program. When he finished, the job search discouraged him and he relapsed.

His second commercial burglary conviction landed him two and a half years in prison. He served one year. Staring at his cell walls, he said to himself, “This is my life.” He was desperate for change. “I gotta do something,” he said. He used his time in prison to work toward a GED, and passed the exam.

Carreon’s parole officer helped him enroll in a second rehabilitation program in San Diego. When he completed the program, he started the job search again, but it was difficult finding an employer who would take a chance on a 24-year-old high school dropout and two-time convicted felon. He wanted to do work and be productive; “I’m trying, I’m trying,” he said to himself. The rejection hurt. He was discouraged. And he felt desperate.

He fought the urge to relapse, and in 2007, he filled out an Urban Corps application. A week before New Year’s Day, the organization called and asked if he was interested in work. He joined a corps street sweeping crew in January 2008. He was elated to have work; he’d race out of his crew’s truck and time himself to see how fast he could switch out garbage can liners. He applied the same enthusiasm in the classroom.

In August 2008, he crossed a stage in a cap and gown, shaking hands with board members, clutching his high school diploma.

Urban Corps gave Carreon, now 26, the routine he desperately needed to stay clean. Now, he works and earns an honest wage with the corps; power washing sidewalks, a crew leader with a class B license and keys to a corps truck. He has a car and a roof over his head.

Carreon limits contact with his mom and one older sister, only checking in from time to time. It’s for his own good, he says. They’re both addicts. His dad is in prison. Again.

He’s rebuilding a relationship with his oldest sister, Patricia. The two spent Fourth of July together on a beach. Holidays with family are routine for most. For Carreon, it was an aberration, an unusually normal occurrence and a reason to take note.

“Celebrating holidays,” he says, “that’s something I do now.”

Carreon was corps’ member of the month once; and he was corps’ member of the year in 2008. He flew to Sacramento to tell legislators his story; the addictions, and prison time; the relapses and second chances; the uncertainty he lives with every day.

“When I come to work, I come straight to work,” he says. “Straight to work and straight home. … Every day I worry … I know if I make a right turn when I’m supposed to turn left, I’ll end up right back where I was. That’s when I’ll be caught slipping. I know it’s not over. I have to fight every day.”

‘I’ll be glad to point you in the right direction’

For two decades Urban Corps has worked with teens and 20-somethings like Joe Carreon who need a second chance or a new start; high school dropouts, teen parents, recovering drug addicts, refugees.

“My job is to help young people,” says Sam Duran, the corps’ executive director. “I tell the young folks, this program may or may not be for you. (If it isn’t) that doesn’t make you a bad person, but if I can help you in any way, I’ll be glad to point you in the right direction.”

About 400 corps members join the program each year. More than 80 percent are high school dropouts, and 50 percent are single parents. Corps members spend an average of six months completing the program; 80 percent of them receive their high school diploma. More than 6,500 people have participated in the corps.

There are currently about 800 applicants. Not all applicants qualify; some are outside the program’s 18-25 age range, and others already have a high school diploma. Money is also an issue.

The corps is a nonprofit funded by individual, foundation and corporate donations, and contracts with San Diego’s Business Improvement Districts, who employ the corps for community improvement projects, like recycling, graffiti abatement and street sweeping. The students work 32 hours a week for $8.50 to $10 an hour. When job contracts are scarce, or money is tied up in red tape, the cash flow lags and the corps hires fewer students.

“It’s never been this tight,” Duran says. “It’s very, very tight right now.”

Duran says the staff is shouldering the majority of the burden; there have been layoffs and furloughed time. But, he says, the organization has avoided making cuts that impact the student workers.

Staff members say participants have to be serious about transforming their lives through hard work and education.

Each week, the students spend eight hours in a classroom — through a partnership with John Muir Charter School, in an on-site high school — and work toward their high school diploma. They have daily access to the school’s computer labs and resource center and to job counseling.

“A lot of them are so close to a high school diploma,” Duran says, “they start to realize without (it), there really is no future for them.”

One program, the Corps-to-Career curriculum, helps corps members obtain a class B and class C driving license, and provides safety and vocational job training, job readiness, life skills and self-esteem training. Corps members learn how to complete resumes, cover letters and application forms, and conduct mock interviews with peers and private sector employees. They also learn valuable interpersonal skills vital to an office or work environment.

When Villatoro immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1990s, she knew she needed a high school diploma to build a future in America. The diploma from her home country, El Salvador, was not valid in the U.S. In El Salvador, she graduated high school with honors and worked as an intern in a bank.

She enrolled in Urban Corps, worked days digging ditches and studied every free moment she had. The first year the corps offered on-site schooling, 1995, she gave a senior presentation and was one of the program’s first two graduates.

After, she enrolled at National University and worked toward a teaching credential. She completed her degree and when she was ready to start teaching she called Duran at Urban Corps. She joined the staff full-time in 2005; a corps success story, and a model for giving back. She teaches English and ESL. The students are “smart … very, very smart” she says, and she’s happy to be a part of their journey.

“I feel like I’m making a difference in their lives,” Villatoro says. “Not everybody is here because they are bad kids. The majority is immigrants, and they need a chance like I had. They need a chance to succeed. A lot of them are motivated, and they’re motivated because they see I’ve been there, where they are right now.”

‘We just need to make it a better place’

Ivan Herrera, 19, is the youngest student worker on the City Heights Crew, and will graduate on Oct. 9. He’s thoughtful; at times talkative, but typically a quiet worker. He has big dreams and bravado. He’s fiercely independent, a product of youth and, perhaps, necessity. He doesn’t say much of his upbringing. He is vocal about and proud of his work ethic, though, and he is ambitious.

“I like to work,” he says. “You can’t be independent if you don’t work.”

The youngest of three, Herrera says he lives on his own now; he lived with his mom for a bit. His dad has been out of the picture for more than five years. “I don’t have anyone to support me,” he says. “And I’m not struggling. I’m actually doing pretty well for myself.”

Cruz – his supervisor with the City Heights crew – calls him a hard worker. Herrera knows it.

He admits to sloughing off his freshman and sophomore years at San Diego High School. He was born and raised in San Diego, specifically Barrio Logan; outside of that, he offers very little in the way of detail. But you get the sense he was a restless kid and the traditional education system just didn’t fit.

An active boy with big dreams — he’d like to be a documentary filmmaker or a mixed martial arts fighter — the confines of a classroom weren’t conducive to his creative, imaginative whim. When high school ended, he was credits shy of graduating. His sister worked with Urban Corps, so Herrera applied.

“I didn’t want to be a high-school dropout statistic,” he says. “I had something to prove.”

The corps was attractive because it allowed him to work and get paid while he finished his high school education. Herrera worked feverishly to finish his coursework and his senior presentation, and took a bit of time off last week from the four-day work schedule to study and finish school. With the corps, workers aren’t given paid time off, so he’ll struggle a bit but, he says, “That diploma is going to fix everything I’ve struggled for.”

Of course, there is no quick fix and there is sure to be struggle down the road. Herrera knows it and — in large part — so does his fellow corps members. The diploma, however, will make the struggle worthwhile; it will reward Herrera’s hard work, and provide a foundation for college or a career – the way it did for Carreon and Villatoro.

Many of the students are just looking for a chance to right wrongs, Duran says, a way out of a rut, or an opportunity to live up to potential.

“Most of these kids just want to do good; just no one has given them the right direction,” Duran says. “The world is what it is. We just need to make it a better place.”

Tags: Cecilia Villatoro, Corps to Career Program, Good Squad, Ivan Herrera, Joe Carreon, Luis Cruz, National Unicersity, Rafaat Esho, Sam Duran, SDNN, Urban Corps San Diego

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