New Haven Independent

For Cardona (pictured), the year 2008 had seemed cursed from the start.

One day after New Year’s, police arrested the 18-year-old. Four felony charges later, he spent two weeks in jail. His daughter Camia, meanwhile, was approaching her first birthday — a blessing but a daunting responsibility, too. He had flunked school after repeating tenth grade nearly four times. Every day, he questioned whether his life had purpose. He felt, in short, like a “nobody.”

But first impressions can lie. Monday he was on his way to New Orleans with four fellow at-risk youth for a week of rebuilding a neighborhood ravaged by Mother Nature and beleaguered by indigence.

Five months into 2008, the year that could have been his worst, Cardona has transformed. He won election to a committee, earned a promise of membership in the local construction workers union, and obtained a high score on his practice GED (General Education Degree) test.

It is all because of a flier he saw — a glimpse of opportunity amid this past winter’s gloom — for Elm City Youthbuild, the organization sponsoring the five-day-long New Orleans trip for five of its participants this week in partnership with Rebuild Together New Orleans.

“I was in the streets. I really didn’t really want to do nothing. I was up to no good,” he explained in a phone interview Sunday. But after the arrest, he said, he “saw a flier” and, though skeptical, “gave it a try.” He’s been part of, and a leader within, the program ever since.

From day one — and especially after he was elected by his peers to the group’s policy committee — “they make us feel like we’re somebody,” he said, “like we can make a difference.”

Included in the “they” to whom he so frequently (and warmly) referred during an interview is Daniel Jusino, the Elm City Youthbuild program director, and JaConna Sowell, the case manager. It is not hard to see why.

At a Friday press conference at the Project MORE headquarters on Grand Avenue, Jusino, for one, nearly sobbed while describing his experience over the past four months.

“Half of [them] are hungry, you see, half … still living on porches,” he said, pointing to the Youthbuild participants (pictured) who stood, huddled together, nearby. “But the problem is not that they’re hungry, because they’re used to that. The problem is how do they learn to make different decisions as adults, and [for us] to not judge them but rather to support them and role model for them.”

That, he said, his voice cracking, “is what is happening here.”

For Max Gilmore, a 24-year-old participant, the New Orleans trip this week — during which he and his four new friends will paint and rebuild in the city’s most desolate corners— will invigorate a dream once deferred.

“My whole life I dreamed I would be a carpenter when I grew up, and that’s all I really ever wanted to do. I wanted to build my own house one day,” he said. “But I was getting into a lot of trouble.”

That’s when he remembered that a friend of his had joined the program and become a “different” person. “I wanted to change my life around,” Gilmore said.

“Usually people scolded [my friends] and treated us like we were all bad, but these people told us that we were different — as if I had a big purpose in life.” Now, he says he is on his way to building his first house. “I am finally figuring out that it’s true.”

The New Orleans trip has been long in the making, and deep in its local, and even national, support. The Elm City Youthbuild Initiative, launched in 2007, was made possible when the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a $400,000 grant to Empower New Haven.

It remains a reality as a result of an impressive number of partnerships: between Project MORE, Empower New Haven, the Buildings Trade Council, the New Haven Housing Authority, New Haven Adult Education, the Commission on Equal Opportunity and the probation department. (Staff members were still securing clearances for the five trip participants to fly late last week.)

Project MORE chief Warren Kimbro (pictured) said the “collaboration” of so many community entities is what distinguishes the Youthbuild experience from other programs. The participants, for their part, cite the directors’ ability to be, at once, friends, leaders and disciplinarians.

Strict regulations are set, and difficult tasks are assigned, but the youth find themselves not jumping to leave at the proverbial 3 p.m. closing bell as they once did in public school. Superficial differences between members that matter so much in the outside world, such as home turf and gang affiliation, disappeared, they added; in retrospect, the associated youth wars seem silly. (The experience, though, is not for everyone: several youth left the program in April.)

For Ana Cardona, Michael’s mother, Youthbuild is unique, even miraculous, for what it has managed to inspire in her son that obvious solutions to his troubles, such as changing settings or enrolling him in adult-education courses, could not. (In one attempt to mature him, she moved her family more than one hour away, to East Windsor, but with no success.)

“Michael was making the wrong choices. He was wandering,” she said in a phone interview. “But once he got into that program, he really has turned his life around now. I’m proud of him.”

He said he is proud of himself, too.