HER Triple Crown Academy
What is the Triple Crown Academy?
It’s the first of its kind workforce development program specially for women. It considers the needs of the whole woman to the benefit of the building trades and our economy, as well as the healing of each woman.
What is the Triple Crown Academy?
It’s the first of its kind workforce development program specially for women. It considers the needs of the whole woman to the benefit of the building trades and our economy, as well as the healing of each woman.
How The Triple Crown Academy works?
Without education, living-wage jobs are scarce. Without housing, stability is impossible. Without reliable transportation, getting to work won’t happen. Without childcare, young single moms cannot work. Without consistent support, trauma survivors struggle to show up consistently.
The goal of the program is to provide young women more positive choices and opportunities through a trauma-informed economic empowerment program focused on enrolling in and completing a construction trade apprenticeship program, gaining the soft skills to maintain employment, using therapeutic care to reduce trauma responses that result in loss of employment, stable housing, and one-to-one support (case management).
HER has partnered with organizations in the construction trades such as the MidAtlantic Carpenters Training Center, and the Baltimore-DC Metro Building and Construction Trades Council Building Trades (Building Trades) to provide apprenticeship opportunities for young women interested in that career path.
In our pilot project, we have seen that young women still in the process of building their resilience need more than a job. They need the wraparound support needed to sustain employment, including stable housing and childcare.
Why The Triple Crown Academy?
Gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and sex trafficking, is about power and control. As a result, women living in poverty, without resources that can either enable choices or provide bargaining power, are at a much greater likelihood of being victimized through violent crimes. They often feel trapped, particularly young adult women with young children.
While this reality is staggering, there is hope. A number of studies have shown that the power dynamics that lead to intimate partner violence can be reversed. When a woman’s income increases, the partner violence against her decreases.[1] When women have control over their income, they are more likely to invest in the wellbeing of their children, which can work to interrupt the cycle of poverty and violence.[2]
To build resiliency and step out of a life of poverty and trauma requires a comprehensive, holistic approach.
Transitional Housing:
To support participants at the Academy for their long-term success, we have incorporated transitional housing to help participants move past crisis and survival mode and become economically empowered.
Provision of stable transitional housing is a key aspect of the Triple Crown Academy. The women participating in the Academy will live at the Academy residence for the first 18 months of their journey through the program, providing a stable environment as they complete their pre-apprenticeship and the early part of their apprenticeship.
Next steps:
The Academy will start with the cohort participating in a three week pre-apprenticeship program. This pre-apprenticeship program will teach the basic skills needed in the construction trades. The pre-apprenticeship program will prepare participants to join an apprenticeship program.
We will identify 6-8 young women who have already been part of HER’s Roadmap to Success program – having worked through crisis stabilization, established a goal plan, and explored their education and employment interests.
Participants who attend and complete their time with the Academy will be introduced to a number of the construction trades, provided an opportunity to complete a paid apprenticeship program, and upon graduating as a Journeyman earn between $70,000-$100,000 annually.
Who is HER Resiliency Center?
HER Resiliency Center (HER) works in the Baltimore and Washington, DC area with young women ages 18-25 who have experienced a variety of hardships, including gender-based violence, poverty, and exploitation resulting from an imbalance of power and control.
Join the movement. Support young women to finding their economic empowerment!!
For more information contact HER’s Founder & President, Natasha Guynes @ natasha@herresiliency.org