Abby Wolensky and her Auberle Employment Institute team will long remember a story one of its participants told during a visit by then-U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and other local officials reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Job Training sites in the region.

He said because of Auberle’s training and help, he secured a job and now could take his son to the dentist.  He had never been able to get such care for himself throughout his life.  

“So powerful. We all talk about that still,” she said.

Auberle has won four grants from the EPA for its job training on those sites, including one in 2023. And with a $1.5 million YouthBuild grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, Wolensky knows more people will find paths to meaningful and family sustaining jobs and be able to recount more stories like his.

The nonprofit is the only organization in Pennsylvania to receive one of the three-year YouthBuild grants. The Department of Labor last month announced the $99.3 million in grants to 71 organizations in 31 states. The goal: provide training and employment services in its continuing effort to expand access to Registered Apprenticeships, prepare young workers for quality jobs and equip them with industry skills.

According to the news release, the YouthBuild Program grants will support pre-apprenticeships to educate and train young people ages 16 to 24 and neither enrolled in school or now in the labor market for construction jobs and employment in other high-demand industries. YouthBuild grants will help deliver education and training to enable participants to build or rehabilitate affordable housing in their communities for people in need.

The department made proposals that align training with local infrastructure projects funded by the Biden-Harris administration’s Investing in America agenda a priority.

Auberle applied for the competitive grant with three long-time partners: Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Home Builders Institute  and ACTION-Housing. Massaro Corp., Generation Stoneworks, Centimark and the Builders Guild signed on as well, and she said Auberle had support from Casey and other local elected officials in its application.

Wolensky said the organization had to show market need, and the partners had to commit a certain number of jobs for participants. Auberle’s Employment Institute, which works with unemployed and underemployed individuals of all ages and officially began in 2013, has built a portfolio of 290 employers across high demand programs in the region. “We have a robust program that leads not only to jobs but also career-level, living wages with benefits with ladders built into them,” she emphasized.

Those jobs and Auberle’s holistic approach to participants help break economic and social cycles for individuals, she added.

Its Employment Institute has twice been named the No. 1 workforce development program in the country by the U.S. Department of Labor for its work with those re-entering the workforce after incarceration, reporting a recidivism rate of below 1%, according to its website.

Auberle won a YouthBuild grant in 2015. This grant brings Auberle $500,000 more than that award, Wolensky said.

Overseen by the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration and supported by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, YouthBuild grants promote a pre-apprenticeship model that provides disadvantaged young people with educational guidance, occupational skills training, and significant supportive services through participation and in the 12-month follow-up period. The supportive services may include transportation assistance, childcare, health care referrals and provision of work attire and personal protective equipment.

YouthBuild participants will divide their time between classroom instruction – where they also can earn a high school diploma or equivalency degree – and workplace training to prepare for careers in health care, information technology, manufacturing and logistics, culinary arts, and hospitality.

Auberle’s Employment Institute offers 13 certificates and that pre-apprenticeship model in food and beverage service, asbestos awareness, customer service, certified nursing assistant, confined space entry, flagger, HAZWOPER or Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response training OSHA 40, introduction to advanced manufacturing, lead awareness, and OSHA 10 and occupation safety. Several of these areas have advanced certification training certifications.

With the YouthBuild grant, Auberle will add a welding program. Wolensky said the number of total certifications will increase to 16 later in 2025.

Some of the training is offered in-house at Auberle’s eight locations in McKeesport, Duquesne, Downtown, Mt. Oliver and Meadville in Crawford County. Partners also train participants at job sites.

Auberle’s Employment Institute serves about 700 participants annually, Wolensky said, with 290 partner employer organizations. Ages range from 14 up to 80.  Summer programs that build work skills serve 14- to 18-year-olds. Those geared to participants 18 and up focus on career building. 

A key to success is working with those employer partners to determine the root causes of high job turnover.  Wolensky said the response has ranged from work ethic to drug and alcohol problems to the lack of essential soft and hard work skills. “We work with those employers to design pipeline programs that lead to employments there,” she explained.

Auberle earned another $50,000 grant for its approach in May last year from the Mutual of America Foundation, which recognized the Employment Institute’s partnership with UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital. The national award recognizes organizations for their outstanding contributions to society in partnership with public, private and other social sector organizations, according to a news release on Auberle’s website. This is the first time in 25 years that a Pittsburgh organization has received this award.

In a video on the Auberle website, a Magee hiring director explained that 90 Auberle graduates joined its workforce in core departments, including food and nutrition, patient transport and front desk destination coordinators. Two of those employees had been lauded for their work early in their work history in addition to securing stable employment.

Participants’ training can be individualized, Wolensky said, from working on a resume to interview skills to communication skills needed on the job.

They earn money while they learn and train, and the support network of 40 services that Auberle provides helps them, too. That can include housing, drug and alcohol recovery services, food, uniforms, driver’s license training, mentorship and more.  If Auberle doesn’t directly offer what participants need, Wolensky said, its partnerships can.

“It just goes to show this work can’t be done in a silo,” she explained. “Auberle brings all those partnerships and supportive services to the table. We’re just as much a support to the employer. When we place a young person or an individual in employment, we don’t just say you have the job, good luck.”

That extends beyond securing the job. “We really do have a comprehensive follow-up model,” the Employment Institute director said.  “We place no timeline when an individual can come to us for support. That just goes to our holistic model. All those supportive services are open to them for as long as they need them.”

With the YouthBuild grant, Auberle will train 66 young people from 16 to 24 in pre-apprenticeship training programs, help them obtain their General Educational Diplomas if needed and provide them with hands-on work experience at Action Housing construction projects. About 80% will need their GEDs, Wolensky said, and training will be balanced with the required classroom time to obtain those.  The grant requires that 10% of their time be spent on hands-on work at actual sites, which would amount to about four to five hours a week. The competencies obtained in a classroom will be reflected in their work with Action Housing on their sites. Participants will be paid throughout the program.

In addition, Wolensky said her staff will provide them with intensive case management that will lead them to permanent employment. To do so, they won’t be limited to the grant’s prescribed hands-on work. “We are good at leveraging with other funding sources and will find them opportunities so they can expand upon those skills and work more than four to five hours at those sites,” she said.

Auberle has grown from its start more than 70 years ago to serve more than 4,000 individuals and families annually in five main program areas: Workforce Development, Housing, Young Adult Services, Foster Care and Behavioral Health.

Pauline Auberle, a McKeesport resident, upon her death willed money and land to the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh to start a “Home” for boys. In 1948, the Pauline Auberle Memorial Foundation incorporated, and in 1952, the Auberle Home for adolescent males opened at 1101 Hartman St. It added services for girls and younger boys in the mid-1980s and moved beyond offering residential services in the 1990s. That included foster care and family reunification services and many school district programs. It began providing drug and alcohol and mental health treatment services for children and adults in 2004 and transitional housing for young adults in 2006.

“We’re the largest nonblood relative foster care program in Allegheny County,” Wolensky pointed out.  “We’ve really evolved over the years to meet community needs.”

The YouthBuild grant will spur more growth and help meet more needs. “I think what it really means is the ability to continue creating opportunities for economic mobility for individuals in the community, for individuals who for one reason or other have barriers,” she said. That includes not being given an opportunity to explore careers, or a criminal record or drug or alcohol dependency. “What becomes really rewarding is to see that individual get that job and be in that job six months later.”

Just like the man who, thanks to a well-paying job with benefits, could now arrange for dental care for his son. He is still in that job, Wolensky said, and he now owns a house and a car.

“These programs can change people’s lives,” she said. “We’re looking forward to more stories like that.”

When it received the Mutual of America award last May, the news release stated that 90% of participants are hired within two weeks of graduation, and 83% are with the same employer for six months or more. During Auberle’s 2023-24 fiscal year, Wolensky said participants earned an average $18.64 an hour across all its certificate programs and all ages and different types of careers.

Just last week, Auberle expanded its employment program across the state to Harrisburg. Through its partnership with Partner4 Work, it will replicate its UPMC program at Magee, Presbyterian and Shadyside hospitals there. UPMC has medical facilities in central Pennsylvania, and Auberle will work with SCPa or South Central PA Works to provide more opportunities and lead participants to family sustaining jobs.   

More information on Auberle’s Employment Institute and an application to enter the program is available at https://www.auberle.org/workforce-development.  

Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she’s currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.