Build UP is the nation’s first and only workforce development model that provides low-income youth with career-ready skills through paid apprenticeships with industry-aligned secondary and early-postsecondary academic coursework, leading them to become educated, credentialed, and empowered civic leaders, workers, homeowners and landlords. It’s an anti-gentrification revitalization model that comprehensively addresses poverty and urban blight by recruiting local youth to enroll to solve local problems. Build UP–Ensley, the program’s pilot school, launched in the Fall of 2018 with youth from Western Birmingham attending school and apprenticeships from 8am-5pm daily, receiving high quality instruction aligned with paid work rebuilding Ensley homes which they will one day own and manage.
