For Calumet Park resident Treiva Mandela, starting down the path toward a rewarding career came down to picking between her pros and cons.
“Electrician was my favorite trade,” she said. “There’s not a lot of heavy lifting for me. … I didn’t want to do dirty work with plumbing and stuff.”
Mandela and dozens of her colleagues enrolled in a pre-apprenticeship program at Bethel Family Resource Center in Chicago Heights. They had 25 different trades to choose from in the program, including instruction in heating, ventilation, air conditioning, electric, plumbing, carpentry, labor and sheet metal work. After their completed training, they receive help applying to unions that specialize in their chosen fields.
The 13-week Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship Program, which has been going on at Bethel since 2022, offers candidates a program that is tuition-free while paying a stipend and offering other support services. Instructors also teach about employability, practicing for interviews and ways to “make yourself more sellable to people,” Mandela explained. They also become certified in CPR and learn about sexual harassment prevention.
The goal is to give participants a skill set, said Robert Biekman, program administrator at Bethel.
“What we do is provide the skills and experiences necessary for them to be able to make successful applications to a U.S. Department of Labor registered apprenticeship program,” Biekman said.
“Another huge piece of it is the employability skills, so when they leave here we want them to be able to have a construction resume, be able to market themselves so they can present themselves in a manner that will allow them to be successful,” said Biekman. “Part of what we do is field trips where we take them to training centers of various unions so they can begin to build rapport.”
One hands-on element for Mandela included working on a tiny house, including light roofing and insulation. A prior cohort put up the frame of the house and subsequent classes erected drywall.
“It did expose me to every single trade, it wasn’t just tailored,” she said. “It gives you more information than you think needed.”
The program includes 250 hours of classroom instruction on subjects such as how to read construction blueprints and construction math, plus 50 hours of hands-on training with power tools and hand tools. They receive nationally recognized credentials from OSHA, first-aid certification and National Center for Construction Education and Research certification.
Mandela, who is taking steps to join an electrical workers union in Alsip, said the program also offered a motivational boost from Biekman.
“He was active and involved in everything,” said Mandela. “He started class with affirmation and was very positive and kept us moving and energized.
“Whatever happened in your day, he made it better,” she said.
The program started in 2021 and recently received a funding boost through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity as part of an over $17 million grant to 39 nonprofits, including Bethel. Other south suburban recipients included Ascending Knowledge Community Outreach International in Harvey, Chicagoland Prison Outreach in South Holland, HIRE360 Will in Joliet, and Lewis University in Joliet.
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
