Making the desert bloom
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Worksource instructor Don Key (left) gives some points on the laying of weed cover to 18-year-old Benjamin Garcia and 17-year-old Michael Jenkins, both students in a Skillsource program that teaches work skills and allows students to earn their GEDs.
MOSES LAKE — Bricks and stones and dirt.
That’s what a half-dozen young men have been hauling, shoveling, and scaping out behind the Moses Lake Worksource office as they take bare scrub earth and turn it into something beautiful.
“This is the culmination of 10 years of work,” said Don Key, an instructor with Skillsource, a part of the Worsksource Washington office here in Moses Lake.
The young men are all part of a work readiness project, Key said, building this courtyard — putting in paving stones, creating the raised garden beds, planting grass and even a food garden where the surplus is harvested and shared with the local food pantry — and earning their GEDs in the process.
It’s all about making sure these young men don’t join the quarter of Moses Lake school students who fail to graduate from high school, as well as helping them get the very basic work skills they will need to survive.
“We call it a re-engagement program,” said Al Valdez, a youth training specialist with Skillsource. “They come here to get their GEDs, and we tie that to basic work readiness: showing up on time, getting along well with others, taking direction.”
It’s a lament expressed by a number of employers in the area — it’s difficult to find employees who show up on time, sober, and ready and able to work. So this program is designed to help young people aged 16-20 (Key said there were no young women interested in participating this summer) learn those skills by working Tuesday through Thursday while they focus on their educations Monday and Friday.
“They aren’t paid for classes, but they are paid for work. For a lot of them, this is their first job,” Key said.
But these young men don’t just labor under the hot Columbia Basin sun. They also plan and review their work, putting to use some the skills they are mastering as they work on the GEDs.
“They learn landscaping and irrigation and applied mathematics,” Key said. “They figure out the cost of the materials they need in order to make sure they don’t waste anything.”
And they review their work too, Key added.
“We meet every morning at 7 a.m., they give their input, and then we debrief at the end of the day. What they did well, and what can be done better,” he said.
Michael Jenkins, 17, said he originally enrolled in the program because he wanted to get his GED. But he said the program was a good place to be.
“I’m learning a lot about how to build and put in sprinklers,” he said.
Jenkins hopes to go to college and get a business degree and hopefully launch his own line of clothing. If laying bricks and putting in sprinklers doesn’t seem like it quite applies, Jenkins said he’s learned the need for planning and accurately estimating costs — things even the smallest business person needs to master in order to stay in business.
“We plan out, to use the right amount of materials, and measure things out,” he said.
Key wants the world to know that this program works, and a lot of young people are able to succeed where they had previously failed and even gain some skills in the process.
“This is a really good program, they learn at their own ability levels and their own pace,” he said. “A lot of students who are behind end up finishing in six months.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.