Ironworkers Academy graduation ceremony shows Philly's Rebuild program is meeting one of its more challenging goals

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Nine graduates of the Philadelphia Ironworkers Academy are the latest workers to get trained for skilled construction work through the city’s Rebuild program.

The Rebuild program was created to improve communities by rehabbing their public facilities like parks, recreation centers and libraries, but one of its loftier goals was to have residents benefit economically as well by hiring locally. However, few of the targeted workforce were in unions or had the skills to join. The Ironworkers are the eighth union to sign up for a pre-apprenticeship training program to clear the way.

Dennis Hernandez just missed getting a union apprenticeship, so he jumped at the chance to join Rebuild’s pre-apprenticeship training program.

“I’m glad I was in this program because if I wasn’t I never would have been on a job site with real ironworkers and realized, yes, this is exactly what I want to do,” he said.

Aparna Palentino, who directs capital projects including Rebuild, says she hopes the graduates will soon be working on projects like the rehab of the Myers Rec Center.

“Our workforce development program aims to support Philadelphians who’ve had no connections to those trades, bridging that gap, offering more opportunities to more Philadelphians to enter the trades,” Palentino said.

Mayor Cherelle Parker told the graduates that when the program started five years ago, there were skeptics who didn’t believe the city would be able to diversify the trade unions.

“You have to be our ambassadors, you have to go back and tell people in your neighborhoods and in your communities that we can actually get this done,” she said.

Hernandez said these past four weeks have been “a journey of self-discovery and working towards being part of something bigger.”

The nine graduates bring to 130 the number of workers who’ve been trained in construction trades in the last five years.