New Work & Learn Center unveiled in Central City

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

Earlier this month, the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) introduced its newest program, the Trafigura Work & Learn Center in Central City.

Located at 2020 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., the Trafigura Work & Learn Center is modeled after a highly successful program operated by Domus Kids in Stamford, CT. The Central City location is the second in the United States funded by the Trafigura Foundation, the charitable arm of the international commodities trading and logistics company. Youth members will be paid while gaining valuable life skills, job training and the confidence necessary to help gain future employment.

Youth ages 16-24 are eligible to participate. The center will operate four 12-week cycles during the year. Each cycle will run two days a week for a total of four hours. The first local business partner will be a bicycle repair shop. A woodworking shop will be added in fall 2013.

The opening ceremony featured a number of speakers, including Council-at-Large Stacy Head, Boh Brothers President Robert S. Boh, and Judge Calvin Johnson. After remarks, the speakers and attending youth participants broke a chain to symbolize the center’s efforts to break the chain of violence and hopelessness in New Orleans.

Vincent Faber, executive director of the Trafigura Foundation, said New Orleans has always held a special place in the company’s heart. The foundation was established in 2007 and some of its first partnerships were with NOCCA and Teach for America in New Orleans.

Faber said the foundation’s goal is to catch young people and give them the tools to succeed before it’s too late. “We want to prevent young people from falling into the margins of society, of violence and addiction,” Faber said.

A few speakers acknowledged that this has been a difficult week in New Orleans following the Mother’s Day shooting. Melissa Sawyer, co-founder and executive director of YEP, said she hoped Wednesday’s ceremony will serve as a reminder of the good things happening in the city. “There’s so many young people doing things right and trying to get back on track,” Sawyer said.

YEP believes its programs are sorely needed in the community. According to the 2010 “City of New Orleans Neighborhood Market Drill Down” report, the unemployment rate for Central City residents ages 16 and over is 47 percent. 16,000 New Orleans youth between the ages of 18-24 are “disconnected,” meaning they are unemployed without a high school diploma.

Ron Laugand, 20, is one youth who has already benefitted from YEP’s programs in the city. At 18, he dropped out of high school and was facing a bleak future. But after joining YEP’s NO­PLAY (New Orleans Providing Literacy to All Youth) program, he said he learned to work and communicate with others. “I’m trying to become the person I was always told I wasn’t going to be,” Laugand said.

Laugand feels Trafigura’s new center will help keep other youths’ minds occupied and teach them valuable work and life skills while keeping them out of trouble. “It’ll teach us how to be better men and women in the crazy, messed up world of today,” Laugand said.

This article originally published in the May 27, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.