Woodworking School Featured in New York Daily Magazine



Brooklyn Woods, a nonprofit organization that teaches the unemployed how to gain a career in woodworking, was recently featured in The New York Times. The daily newspaper includes local and global news on business, technology, science, health, sports, arts, style and travel.

The article, titled "Training for a New Life Through a New Trade," explains how the organization provides tools and skills to those who are chronically unemployed and have difficulties finding steady work to find stable woodworking jobs. "The workshop is filled with the tools students learn to use: machines for sawing, shaping, planning and notching wood and for attaching hinges, and tools for installing the finished products in the apartments' kitchens," writes New York Times writer Joseph P. Fried. "The students are hoping that the skills they learn will lead to new and reliable vocations and solid blue-collar lives."

The program arranges interviews for graduates with potential employers, generally small to midsize custom cabinetmakers and closet manufacturers. About 80 percent are hired, at an average wage of $10.50 an hour, which is about the average for novice cabinetmakers and bench carpenters in the city.

Brooklyn Woods was founded in 1999 and merged this year with Brooklyn Workforce Innovations, which runs other vocational training programs, to gain access to more financing. Brooklyn Woods has also recently started using materials like bamboo and domestic hardwoods supplied by companies that avoid practices like clear-cutting forests to join the "green building" trend.

The cabinets that trainees make are sold for use in apartment renovations. Since 2003, Brooklyn Woods has produced kitchen cabinets for 75 apartments that were renovated by Habitat for Humanity and for 23 apartments rehabilitated by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

For the full article, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/jobs/23homefront.html_r=1'scp=1'sq=Training+for+a+New+Life+Through+A+New+Trade'st=nyt&oref=slogin.

About Brooklyn Woods:

Brooklyn Woods is a nonprofit group that provides a promising path to people who are chronically unemployed or bounce between unsteady and unsatisfying low-wage jobs. Six times a year, Brooklyn Woods offers eight weeks of training in cabinetmaking at no close to its students.





Woodworking School Featured in New York Daily Magazine