If you're a young person in Raleigh, N.C., struggling to find work, you can now get job training and help the community.

Capital Area Workforce Development (CAWD), an organization that runs youth programs, has received a $1 million grant from the United States Department of Labor to establish a youth work-training program. “The goal is to serve 60 young adults,” said Eric Breit, CAWD's strategic initiative director.

The program will offer construction-related education, on-the-job training and job placement help to 16-24 year-olds in areas of Raleigh with high poverty rates and youth unemployment. “We're targeting specifically young adults in the 27604, 27610 and 27601 (ZIP codes),” Breit said.

Participating youths will directly benefit the community: They will be building affordable homes for low income families through CAWD's partnership with Habitat for Humanity.

The training will open the door for jobs in carpentry and construction, which in 2016 had a median salary of more than $34,000. The median salary for a construction supervisor was about $55,000.

Currently these jobs are not getting filled. “In Wake County alone, the construction industry is projected to grow over 2,000 jobs in the next five years, but employers have jobs they can't fill now,” said Pat Sturdivant, executive director of CAWD. “We're definitely hearing from the construction industry that they're having a great difficulty filling jobs. We see this as one way to help them with that.”

CAWD has done community work with Wake County Human Services and its partner the City of Raleigh. Wake County Human Services “runs a lot of social service activity like food stamps, that tend to have residents from the communities we're targeting,” Sturdivant said. The City of Raleigh will help get the word out about CAWD's new program by having information available at community centers.

Interested applicants or their parents can find out more at http://nando.com/4wk.

Source: The News & Observer