BY LOGAN HURSTON
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — Are you a young adult looking to get your GED? Are you looking to gain hands-on experience for a specialized career? Then the Opelika Housing Authority’s YouthBuild program is the place for you.
YouthBuild is an international program that helps communities by giving young adults ages 18 to 24 the chance to learn community-based, pre-apprenticeship training while helping the completing education tracks like the GED (general equivalency diploma). Participants also help build homes for families in need as community service. The program was started in 1978 by Dorothy Stoneman, a teacher in East Harlem, New York. The program has grown to an international program over the last 47 years, with the first YouthBuild Program being approved for Opelika in 2023.
The Opelika Housing Authority (OHA) received a $1.3 million dollar grant from the
U.S. Department of Labor for the program, which officially got underway in 2024. The
program lasts six to eight months, with each participant being paid biweekly in cash incentives. In the first year, the program had four participants. Now the program has served 52.
“Word of mouth and having a target base has helped grow the program,” said Opelika native Willie Mixon, director of the YouthBuild program. “We put flyers in the places that the young folks go to like dollar stores, laundromats, certain barber shops, the Lee County Youth Development Center and the boards of education. I came on board last April, and from that point until July we recruited the whole of Lee County, because nobody had heard about us before.”
The program helps participants earn GEDs and land jobs in their chosen fields. OHA works with Southern Union State Community College for the academic portions of the program. Each participant gets construction certification through NCCER and OSHA, along with learning certifications at Southern Union if they want to learn a trade. After completing the six to eight months, OHA will follow up with each participant for a year to check their status and assess additional needs.
“The typical day runs starts around 9:30 a.m. and ends around 4 p.m.,” Mixon said. “Ninety percent of the participants don’t have access to transportation, so we provide transportation for them. In that time, Monday and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the participants are at Southern Union for GED purposes or certification purposes. The students then help
rehabilitate homes from 1 p.m. til about 3 or 3:30 p.m.
“The participants didn’t like me at first, but over the next couple of months, they saw that I care for this community, and I am from this community,” Mixon said. “We treat it like a family, and they saw that I’m not mean, but I’m tough on them. The world isn’t going to be easy for them — it’s gonna be tough, and once they realized that, we turned a corner, and it’s been great.”
For more information on OHA’s YouthBuild program, visit opelikaha.org, call (334) 748-9913 or email youthbuild@opelikaha.org.