By Maya Rao
The Philadelphia Inquirer
BURLINGTON, N.J. — “Who wants to be first?” Howard Herbert asked the men gathered before him.
Eugene Gaynor accepted the slab of wood and tape measure. He calculated the dimensions, then read them off: three-quarters of an inch thick, 9 inches wide, 97/8 inches long.
He was wrong, Herbert said - off by an eighth of an inch. It was an important difference, the instructor reminded his class in the shop room of Burlington City High School.
Once imprisoned for burglary and theft, the 48-year-old Gaynor joined 10 other men this week in a newly expanded city program called Vision of Hope that trains and provides subsequent employment in the construction trades for ex-offenders struggling to reenter society.
Bruce Bradford, 45, wants to support his son, but it’s hard for him to get a job with his past drug charges. Anthony James, 37, is here after his public defender in a drug case suggested the program after saying, “You’re a good guy, you just made a mistake.”
The 12-week class addresses two of the city’s biggest challenges: a high crime rate and deteriorated housing.
“When you’re impoverished, you’re hopeless because you have no job, no skill, and probably no chance of getting either, so what this does” is make people employable, said Mayor James Fazzone, who attended the class.
The men will spend much of their time rehabilitating a house at 130 E. Federal St. in the city’s New Yorkshire neighborhood, in addition to taking the shop classes and attending counseling on how to resolve personal and financial problems.
Program volunteer Nolan Branch, pastor of Word Christian Center, said his church owned the property and wanted it fixed up.
It was while driving down Federal Street three years ago that the inspiration for Vision of Hope came to Richard Lee, who grew up in Burlington City and now lives in Willingboro.
Lee, who had happy memories of playing on the street as a child, recalled seeing “the drinking, the hanging around, and the little kids seeing all this going on, and I said, ‘This is not right. . . . With them seeing all this, they’re going to grow up thinking this is normal. This is what they’ll be.’”
Though crime has improved in New Yorkshire, it is still home to many of the city’s ills.
So Lee teamed up with religious leaders and a city nonprofit agency called SisterHood Inc., which provides social services for much of the community, including people coming out of prison.
Together they launched Vision of Hope, which has eight volunteers. Lee, for his part, is devoting his time after being on disability from his job selling shoes at Macy’s, due to back injuries.
The program’s first class graduated six students in November.
“They were so proud to finish something... It gave them a sense of accomplishment,” said Lee. “We gave them hope.”
Volunteers noted a struggle to come up with funds, however, and said they would look to secure grants and corporate and individual donations.
The program received 30 applicants for its second class. The plan is to hold three classes a year. Participants are trained in the classroom three days a week in the afternoon, in carpentry, plumbing, painting and other aspects of building, while working on the house five days a week.
They team up with contractors during the training who can hire them after they graduate.
Lamont Reed, who worked with Lee to start the program, said Vision of Hope is trying to build productive members of society: “It’s not, you make one mistake and that’s the end of your life.”
The Rev. Hilda Covington, executive director of SisterHood, greeted the men sitting in folding chairs in the shop room by noting the hunger in their eyes, their desire to succeed.
“We are here to see you finish what you start and finish well,” she said.
Herbert walks his class through the basics of tools and measurements.
“I can get with this,” said Bradford toward the end.
The program, Bradford predicted, “will help a whole lot of people get a job that couldn’t get jobs before.”
But there are still many people who can’t in this city, he said, noting the difficulty of getting a job with a criminal background.
With that, he said wistfully, “pretty much ain’t nothing they could do.”
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