WOMEN OF THE ALAMEDA COUNTY PS / CBA : JUANITA DOUGLAS
Toni , a 2022 Women Building the Bay graduate , is now a project manager at Rebuilding Together East Bay North .
offered to train her as a surveyor , paying her journeyman wages while she completed that apprenticeship – a professional move she says was the best she ever made .
Throughout her career , Juanita earned an excellent income and was able to send her son to college at UC Santa Barbara — he became a successful computer engineer . Having recently turned 70 , Juanita is now well into in her retirement years , but continues to work – not for the money but rather , as a means to contribute her knowledge and skills to help others achieve success in the trades ; her two union pensions in addition to social security already provide her ample financial security .
After her official “ retirement ” in May 2014 , the local Operating Engineers Union invited Juanita to train their journeymen on using the latest
Global Positioning System ( GPS ) equipment . “ They were paying me a very generous sum to teach these weekend classes , but no one was showing up ,” she recalls . A friend of hers had started working with CityBuild and suggested that Juanita spend a few days each month training CityBuild students on GPS , which soon led to her teaching the subject for all the local pre-apprenticeship programs , including Rising Sun . “ Rising Sun ’ s Opportunity Build was the only pre-apprenticeship program offering an all-women ’ s cohort ,” says Juanita . “ In 2018 , when their regular instructor went on summer vacation , I started teaching a 12-week , Saturdayonly hands-on class . I had not been planning to go back to work full time , but then they created a full-time construction instructor position just for me .”
Marlin Jeffreys ( now the Director of the Opportunity Build program ) and Juanita began designing an entirely new curriculum to provide Opportunity Build ’ s students with training and skills that were more immediately applicable to the construction trades . “ It wouldn ’ t have happened without Marlin – he ’ d spent 26 years in prison and had graduated from the Opportunity Build program himself , so he understands the challenges first-hand and is totally dedicated to this program . When I first started at Rising Sun , there was only one skill saw and students were learning hands-on carpentry by building birdhouses and toolboxes . Marlin and I went to Home Depot to buy the necessary tools and equipment . Now , we ’ ve got them building everything from planter boxes for use in community and prison gardens to tiny homes that provide vital shelter to our local unhoused .
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