PHOTO BY VISHAL PERSAUD

ReBuilder’s Source offers new life to building materials and ex-prisoners

Sounds of power sanders filled the warehouse of ReBuilder’s Source on Timpson Place on a recent afternoon. They didn’t buzz, they boomed. Six people were at work, two or three times the usual staff at the worker-owned cooperative.

ReBuilder’s Source didn’t hire more workers. It was hosting a weeklong training program in cooperation with the Osborne Association – a non-profit that provides job training for people who were once in prison.

“They will definitely leave here knowing more than when they came in, and it’s not just frivolous: it’s stuff that can actually be carried forward,” said Joel Frank, a partner in ReBuilder’s Source, a kind of discount Home Depot that collects furniture, fixtures, doors, windows and other building material that would otherwise be discarded to sell at a steep discount to contractors and home improvement do-it-yourselfers.

The Mott Haven-based business is one of many in the Bronx that may benefit from a $4 million federal stimulus grant to the Consortium for Worker Education. The students enrolled in the Osborne Association’s Green Career Center also received construction training from Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 10 and the Association for Energy Affordability.

“I hope to take some of these skills to enhance the other positive skills that I’ve gotten,” said Lawrence Harris, 41, who was caught with five and a half ounces of cocaine and faced 62 years to life in prison, but is now on work release and hoping to get his life back on track.

At ReBuilder’s Source, the students learned how to take apart furniture and then use various tools to sand the pieces to a smooth and even surface. They learned the step-by-step sanding process to refurbish benches that would otherwise have ended up in a waste transfer station or buried in a landfill. They also learned more about other tools and products used to refurbish items.

Most of ReBuilder’s stock comes from construction and demolition sites. When the co-op gets a call from a building firm, Frank and his co-workers head over to pick up pieces of wood, old cabinets and doors, toilets and sinks or whatever is salvageable. Workers refurbish each piece to make it as close to a new item as possible before offering it for sale.

In addition to practical skills, ReBuilder’s training program introduces the students to the entrepreneurial side of the business.

“You have an opportunity to work with your hands, and then we give you a little bit of exposure as to what it would be like if you wanted to create a business out of what you’re building with your hands,” said Janco Adamaj, another partner in the worker cooperative who teaches the business portion of the program.

In a rented computer lab near the cooperative’s warehouse, Adamaj taught the students some of the basic skills they need to run a business like ReBuilder’s, things like how to post listings of items they’ve made or refurbished on eBay and Craigslist and how to create a profit and loss statement for a business.

“I’m looking for a career; I’m not looking for a job. I’m looking for a career so I can take care of my family and live a civilian life” said Kevin Smiley, 41, who committed a crime seven years ago and is now trying to rebuild his life.

The Osborne Association created a pilot project with ReBuilder’s Source, testing it with just one participant, and concluding that it was successful. While making buildings energy-efficient has become the mainstay of the green-job marketplace, the worker-owned cooperative offers refurbishing as another alternative. The Osborne Association felt t these additional skills would help their students when it came time to look for employment.

“They get to be in a real work environment,” said Jessica Rooks, director of the Green Career Center at the Osborne Association. They also get to see some of the things they’ve learned in the classroom in an actual small green business.

“We hope that we’ll stay in a relationship where we’ll be able to explore new possibilities in addition to the work we started,” said Rooks.

In trying to breathe life into a young industry in the South Bronx, training programs like the one at Osborne are also aiming to give a second life to men and women who once hit rock bottom, like Kevin Smiley.

“The only person that’s going to stop me from benefiting is me,” said Smiley.

Angel Aracena (left) instructs Roberto Avillan (right) on a PowerPoint presentation in a computer training class at the Phipps Opportunity Center on Third Avenue and 159th street.PHOTO BY VISHAL PERSAUD

Classes connect residents to jobs and family on-line

By Vishal Persaud
persaud@mottthavenherald.com

Hunched over a keyboard in the second row of a computer lab at the Phipps Opportunity Center in Melrose, Ricardo Avillan, 51, chats with his grandsons in Puerto Rico on Facebook.

Avillan began making the trek across the 145th Street Bridge from East Harlem to the Bronx to attend computer classes every Monday and Wednesday because he realized that knowing how to use the Internet might give him a better chance to find a job. Learning to connect with his family via Facebook was a bonus.

“In my time when I was a kid, we made our toys, but now everything is different,” said Avillan.

While most Americans now hold the power of the Internet in the palm of their hand, many others still don’t know what it’s like to move a mouse on a desktop, much less the trackball on a Blackberry.

According to a report released by the Federal Communications Commission in February, 35 percent of Americans do not have a high-speed Internet connection at home. Among those, Hispanics make up the largest group.

Computer training centers like the one at Phipps Opportunity Center on Third Avenue and East 159th Street are a bridge across this digital divide.

“My job here is to build up an awareness and appreciation for all the possibilities that the Internet possesses,” said Angel Aracena, director of educational technology at the Phipps Community Development Corporation. Twice a week, he teaches local residents simple Internet navigation and more advanced uses of the Internet, including how to pay bills or shop online.

The center has 19 computers in a small lab at the back of the opportunity center. Most of the people who use the computers live in the apartment building that houses the center, according to Rosemary Ordonez-Jenkins, assistant executive director for adult and family services at Phipps.

Many of the residents who attend Aracena’s classes had never used a computer or browsed a website.

A study by the National Broadband Plan Consumer Survey found that people who do not subscribe to a high-speed Internet connection cite three main reasons: affordability, lack of computer education and relevance to their lives.

That agrees with Aracena’s observation. “It’s not part of their priorities,” he said.

But the inability to use the Internet magnifies the problems that affect low-income people and immigrants, said David Birdsell, Dean of Public Affairs at Baruch College.

Those without Internet know-how or access “are less able to take advantage of educational and small business opportunities and are less able to stay in touch with their neighborhoods,” Birdsell said. “The Internet is a prerequisite for full participation in society.”

“It would help me get a lot more information on things that I need to know as far as working and even school,” said Carlos Ortiz, 23, who attended the class at Phipps as part of training for Justice Corps, a program that helps young adults acquire practical skills to find jobs and become more involved in their communities.

Ortiz has only a few, scattered opportunities to use a computer. He can go on-line briefly on the computer his mother has for work, in class or when he gets a chance to go to the library.

The Obama administration proposed a National Broadband Plan that calls on Congress to address the need to make the Internet more available through discounts for broadband service and computer training for low-income Americans, including the creation of a Digital Literacy Corps to provide hands-on computer instruction. The plan would also target training centers like the Phipps Opportunity Center and libraries to increase their capacity to help with the education training.

If discounts were available, residents like Providencia Maisonet, 58, might be able to subscribe to the Internet at home.

“It’s $50 dollars a month, and I’m paying for Internet on my cell phone, so I don’t know what to do,” said Maisonet, who attends the Phipps class and recently bought a laptop to practice things she’s learned.

Ricardo Avillan has also bought a laptop based on recommendations from Aracena. Once he learns enough, he wants to use it to write music, but also to apply for jobs.

His search for work brought him to the Phipps Opportunity Center, when he found that employers were referring him to their websites to find their applications for work. He couldn’t follow through, he said, because he didn’t have a computer or know how to use the Internet.

“I understand now that I have to know about computers,” Avillan said.

Students from PS 18 in Mott Haven perform an African dance routine in the Black History Month play hosted by the East Side House Settlement after-school program.PHOTO BY VISHAL PERSAUD

Shh! don’t tell the kids at PS 18 that as they dance, play games and put on plays, they’re getting an education

John Acham, a fourth-grader at PS 18 on Morris Avenue sat in the second row of the school auditorium, in a worn, wooden seat, and stared at the two pieces of paper he held in his hands.

His brow furrowed; with each passing minute, he took more frequent, shorter breaths; he moved from side to side in his seat.

Soon, though, he was on stage, confidently portraying both a slave owner and Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery to become an Abolitionist leader.

Performed during Black History Month, the play was part of the after-school program run by the East Side House Settlement. The program helps to reinforce what children learn in the classroom, but also gives them exposure to subjects they don’t learn about in school, according to Althea Stevens, the East Side House program coordinator at the school.

Students at PS 18 do not spend much time on black history, because they dedicate so much time to prepare for the statewide reading and math tests, said Stevens.

Though most of the students are African-American, “Some of the kids didn’t know who Rosa Park was,” Stevens said. Before they began rehearsals, most of them knew little about the specifics of slavery or the civil rights movement.

Ashley Fenelus, 10, said the play taught her to respect African-American leaders because they “guided us from civil rights and all the things from racism to slavery.”

Because the East Side House after-school program gives them access to arts, dance and music classes, the students learn in a way many of them described as a fun, interactive environment. In addition to the play, the program approached black history through games, including scavenger hunts, trivia and bingo. But black history isn’t the only thing students in the program learn about.

“We bring enrichment in different ways,” said Leslie Mantrone, manager of school-based programs at East Side House. “For the most part they’re not getting a lot of that in school.”

Mantrone described an African dance class as one of the ways students learn through doing. “Physically it helps them, because a lot of kids in this neighborhood don’t move around a lot, and they go home and sit in their apartments,” she said.

During the school day, students and teachers don’t have the liberty of a flexible curriculum, “It’s more structured. We need to follow time constraints,” said Kim Pressley, a fifth-grade teacher at PS 18.

“We teach using the state standards,” said Pressley, who is also a skills developer for the after-school program. Basically, she said, her students are graded on whether or not they meet the New York State standards.

According to Cecilia Espinosa, an associate professor at Lehman College’s Department of Early Childhood and Childhood Education, the absence of enrichment classes in the arts, physical education and dance in New York City’s public schools is “very, very sad.”

“There’s a very narrow emphasis on test factors,” said Espinosa, who blames the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law increased pressure on the states to produce measurable results, leading school systems to rely more heavily on standardized testing. The result, according to Espinosa, is that arts and physical education classes have lost their place in the curriculum of many schools.

Enter after-school programs like the East Side House program that reach beyond the confines of textbooks and citywide and statewide tests.

“They take the time here; they’re a little bit more hands on,” said Jessie Davila, whose two daughters attend the after-school program. She says their participation has improved her daughters’ school work.

Counselors helped the sisters in one-on-one tutorials, said Davila, giving them extra help in reading. The program also provided the creative enrichment they get from music and dance classes.

East Side House has a partnership with PS 18, and works with the school’s administration to develop the after-school program, which is available to any student at the school, free, said Mantrone.

“It’s a whole other piece of learning that is going to help kids be independent and become independent learners,” she said.

A version of this story appeared in the April 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Class members (from left to right) Elissa Kasow, KC Rogers, Marie Orilus, Robin Arroyo and Warner Perez sample baked eggplant chips and cucumber-eggplant rolls they made during the cooking class.

South Bronx Food Co-op offers classes in how to prepare its produce

Two large purple eggplants lay on a small wooden cutting board, surrounded by knives, metal baking pans and containers of salt, pepper and herbs as an intimate cooking class began on a recent Wednesday evening.

“So, who’s had eggplant before?” Lara Cely asked the five students gathered around a folding table. Cely, a healthy eating enthusiast and neighborhood resident volunteered to teach the class for the South Bronx Food Cooperative.

Cely, who trained as a chef with City Harvest, decided to teach the class because of her interest in promoting healthy eating to residents of the South Bronx, where fresh fruit and vegetables are scarce.

The South Bronx Food Cooperative hosts the cooking class across the street from its store, on Third Avenue, between East 158th and 159th streets in Melrose. Everyone from the mainly low-income community is welcome at the classes to learn how to prepare vegetables available at the co-op using easy, yet creative recipes.

The cooking class is just one of the options the co-op has started to help encourage a healthier lifestyle in a community where fast food restaurants and bodegas that sell 25-cent bags of potato chips dominate the culinary landscape.

The cooking class meets every second and fourth Wednesday each month. Students chip in a few dollars to pay for the fresh vegetables from the co-op, some of which are unfamiliar to many shoppers at the store.

“I’ve only had eggplant in eggplant parmesan,” said Melrose resident Robin Arroyo. Of the four other students in the class, Warner Perez, a New York City transit worker, also said he didn’t have much eggplant in his diet.

Perez said the class is making him “more aware of what should be consumed on a daily basis.”

According to New York City’s health department, residents in Mott Haven and Hunts Point are twice as likely to have diabetes than residents in Manhattan, and suffer more from heart disease and obesity.

“I wouldn’t want to be a statistic,” Perez said.

Marie Orilus, a social worker from Queens, shared a recipe about how she cooked eggplant in a stew with turkey and beef neck bones.

“It gives it a different taste, a different flavor,” said Orilus, as she talked about how she seasoned the neck bones with a green and red pepper, scallion, garlic and parsley puree, before steaming chopped eggplant separately and combining it with the neck bone in a tomato-based stew.

Cely sat back and listened. Once her students finished sharing recipes, she announced they would cut one eggplant into thin rounds resembling potato chips, and the other lengthwise into long, thin strips. The students took turns at cutting up the eggplants, placing them in separate baking pans lined with aluminum foil.

Orilus and Arroyo sprinkled herbs and spices onto the eggplant chips, while the others sprinkled sea salt on the strips of eggplant. Cely placed both pans in the oven for 25 minutes. While the eggplant baked, Perez chopped up mint leaves for the dish while other students cut a cucumber into tiny, pickle-sized strips.

The eggplant came out of the oven, toasted light brown, hot and ready to eat. Students grabbed at the eggplant chips. They proved soft and chewy.

Cely instructed her students to sprinkle some lemon juice onto the strips of eggplant for the other dish–—a cucumber-eggplant roll.

Arroyo was the first to try it. She sprinkled some chopped mint in the dark eggplant and rolled it in a piece of light green cucumber into a long roll that resembled a vegetarian pig-in-the-blanket.

The crisp texture of the cucumber contrasted with the soft, gooey eggplant. The mint and lemon juice provided a sweet and sour flavor. Each student tried the roll. Five heads nodded in approval.

A version of this story appeared in the Winter issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Soundslide and description by Chris Prentice

After her mother’s health struggles, Lara Cely, who teaches cooking at the South Bronx Food Cooperative, decided to learn about nutrition. She joined the co-op and, later, completed a chef-training program with City Harvest, which collects million of pounds of food from restaurants, grocers and other sources and delivers it to community food programs.

The class helps to combat the area’s diabetes epidemic, and, together with the Food Cooperative itself, to try to make what the Department of City Planning has called a “food desert” bloom with quality fruits and vegetables.

The class is just one sign of change. Mott Haven residents are growing their own produce. There’s a new wholesale farmers market in Hunts Point. And the city’s Lower Concourse plan includes a call for a new supermarket.

In the meantime, these South Bronx residents learn that eating healthy can be quick and easy, too.

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.