WHITESBORO – Members of the Whitesboro Historic Preservation Project are trying to help young people prepare for the future through a new carpentry apprenticeship program, based in Whitesboro, that will help participants earn while they learn.

“This means real skills, real paychecks, benefits, and long-term union contracts, the foundation of stable, middle-class lives,” said Minister Elorm Ocansey, who established the program in partnership with the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters. “The whole point of this program is to build the labor force.”

According to Ocansey, the partnership between the carpenters union and the historically Black town of Whitesboro will create “jobs, training and justice” and will be led by the carpentry council’s secretary-treasurer, Anthony Abrantes.

The minister addressed a group at the Whitesboro Grammar School on Sept. 19, telling them the apprenticeship program will be a way for young high school graduates to train for a good job and earn a living wage.

He called the partnership “a blessing and a model for the state.”

“It honors the sacrifice of our past while investing boldly in Whitesboro’s future,” Ocansey said.

He said the site for a resource center where training would take place is yet to be determined. He expressed hope that Middle Township would work with the program to help make it a success.

Ocansey said project labor agreements could be the single biggest tool to ensure that everyone benefits from public investments, especially when paired with real, enforceable set-asides for minority and women-owned businesses. He said equity studies have already demonstrated a pressing need for these provisions.

“Without them, too many residents are shut out of opportunities in their own communities,” he said. “That’s why defending and expanding PLAs isn’t just about jobs, it’s about justice.”

According to Ocansey, Whitesboro stands as proof that union strength and Black heritage together can change the economic future of an entire community.

“We are not just preserving American history here,” he said. “We are rewriting it with union paychecks, community pride and Black heritage restored.”

Abrantes said the Whitesboro project is similar to one in a historically Black section of Asbury Park. He said the union has been working with Felicia Simmons, who is also involved with the Whitesboro project. The project in Asbury Park involved rehabilitating the Westside Community Center.

“The idea is to expose kids to the carpentry trades,” Abrantes said. “To make sure there is a pipeline to union jobs out there.”

He said there is a narrative, across the county, that says few people are interested in trade jobs. He said the people putting out that narrative are from the non-union sector.

“On the union side, we have the opposite problem,” he said. “We have the people, but not the employers who want to pay union scale.”

Abrantes said part of the problem is that young people do not know there are opportunities in the trade; there is no exposure for it, he said.

“They don’t know what they don’t know,” he said. “And we have been falling short for a couple generations.”

He said the partnership involves being in the community and bringing pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs into the community. Then, he believes, they will be able to convince the construction industry there is a supply of young people interested in the trades, but who also want to be fairly compensated.

“There will be a huge impact to have good, middle-class jobs again,” he said.

Abrantes said that his carpenters group has a partnership with almost every vocational school in New Jersey, and that the majority of their graduates go directly into trades.

Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or call 609-886-8600, ext. 128.