Wal-Mart Foundation awards $64,860 grant to YouthBuild Rockford

From press release

Wal-Mart representatives presented a check for $64,860 to YouthBuild Rockford Sept. 28 as part of a $2.6 million contribution the Wal-Mart Foundation is making to YouthBuild USA.

The overall contribution will go toward YouthBuild USA’s efforts to engage 2,000 disadvantaged young adults in 35 low-income communities across the country in a comprehensive program of education, job training, personal development and civic engagement.

The local contribution will help YouthBuild Rockford implement new green training programs and pursue business opportunities in the green economy, including deconstruction, weatherization, energy auditing, solar installation, Brownfield remediation and lead abatement. It will also support expansion of the agency’s Salvage Too/Rockford ReUse Center.

YouthBuild Rockford is a highly-regarded program of Comprehensive Community Solutions, Inc. (CCS), that provides low-income young people who have dropped out of high school in the Rockford area with vital opportunities to become productive, self-supporting adults.

YouthBuild serves out-of-school youth with academic education, vocational skills training, personal counseling, positive peer support, leadership development, job placement and follow-up support.

In addition, participants build or rehabilitate housing for low-income families, and have produced 41 units of housing in Rockford since the program began.

To learn more, visit youthbuildrockford.org.

YouthBuild USA is a youth and community development program that simultaneously addresses core issues facing low-income communities: housing, education, employment, crime prevention and leadership development.

In YouthBuild USA programs, low-income young people ages 16-24 work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas while learning job skills by building affordable, increasingly green, housing for homeless and low-income people and participating in leadership development activities in their communities.

YouthBuild programs are sponsored by local community- and faith-based organizations and public entities that raise funds from a variety of sources, with the primary federal funds administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. There are now 273 YouthBuild programs in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands. Ninety-two thousand YouthBuild USA students have built 19,000 units of affordable, increasingly green, housing since 1994. To learn more, visit youthbuild.org.

To learn more about philanthropy at Wal-Mart, visit walmartfoundation.org.