YouthBuild Newark, Inc.

What does it actually take to build a city? Our Construction CTE students found out.

At Prudential Global Investment Management (PGIM)'s active construction site in West New York, students explored how real estate developments come to life, from the planning to the day-to-day craft of construction. Seeing a major project up close and hearing from the professionals making it happen turns abstract career talk into a clear picture of what's possible. 🏗️

Thank you to PGIM for opening your worksite during # NationalApprenticeshipWeek.

YouthBuild has always been built on the belief that young people, given the right support, can transform themselves and their communities. This Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating the women who make that belief real.

Jasmine Joseph-Forman, Chief Program Officer at NOYN, is one of those women. She carries her grandmothers’ quiet strength, her aunt’s unapologetic confidence, and her mother’s legacy of service into this work every day.

“These are the women whose shoulders I stand on, only hoping to build the same legacy for my daughter and generations after her.”

To every young woman in YouthBuild: she sees you.
“You are worthy. You don’t have to become someone else to succeed. You just have to refine who you already are.”

They came through YouthBuild. Now they are wiring Newark's future. 💙🔌

Matthew, Xiomara, Zacore, and Taj are YouthBuild Newark alumni enrolled in RampUp America's fiber optics training program, putting the hands-on skills they built here to work in one of the most in-demand trades in the country. For each of them, they've seen themselves grow and transform how they see their futures.

"Every day you wake up, you got a choice." — Zacore

Read their full story (LINK IN BIO)
🔗 www.youthbuildnewarknj.org/transformation/fiber-optics-story-of-transformation

Last week, students in our YouthBuild Newark Construction Pathway program visited NJ TRANSIT for the Future in Motion High School Tours, putting a new destination on the map for their career paths.

They toured the facility, heard directly from the people who keep NJ Transit running day-to-day, and learned about the range of roles involved in operating and maintaining a transit system.

The most exciting highlight was getting behind the controls of a train simulator!
Thank you to NJ Transit for hosting this event!

𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘀𝗵

At just 22 years old, Diane Nash was leading the Nashville sit-ins and coordinating strategy for the Freedom Rides during the Civil Rights Movement. z
Born in Chicago in 1938, Nash transferred to Fisk University in Nashville where she experienced Jim Crow segregation for the first time. She refused to accept these conditions and instead took action.

Nash attended nonviolent resistance workshops and quickly emerging as a leader in the Nashville Student Central Committee. The Nashville sit-ins she helped organize became the first successful civil rights campaign to integrate lunch counters in the South. When violence threatened to end the Freedom Rides in 1961, Nash coordinated their continuation from Nashville.

In 1960, Nash was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which remained independent of adult organizations and added a fresh youth voice to the movement.

Today, when young people facilitate community conversations, analyze data, and advocate for policy change, they're walking the path Diane Nash helped create.

Nash's legacy shows that youth voice is essential for creating lasting change, and young people don't need to wait for permission to lead.

March is Women's History Month and we are excited to celebrate the leaders and changemakers making history from then to now!

We are grateful for the women who have improved their communities and turned advocacy into action.
And we are proud of the women in our community continuing that legacy today: staff members fostering growth, alumni creating solutions in their communities, and young women using their voices to drive policy change.

We honor the foundation women have built and the future we're creating together.

LEAD students visited Kean University for the annual Human Rights Institute at Kean University's MLK Day of Service conference, exploring what it means to carry forward Dr. King's legacy of community engagement.

The annual Day of Service conference, co-organized by Engage NJ and the NJ Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Commission, brought together young people from across New Jersey to discuss how they can lead change in their communities.

Our students showed up ready to learn, connect, and take action.