California Prison Industry Authority offers nationally recognized certificate program that promises to get former inmates back to work
LOS ANGELES, CA- In partnership with The California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA), Five Keys is launching a custodian training program that will provide opportunities for formerly incarcerated men and women to join the statewide organization’s team of 300-plus custodians and get immediately back to work. Through this training, five people in Five Keys’ re-entry program will train for the next five weeks in this nationally recognized accredited certification program and are slated to begin work in September at three hotels in Redondo Beach.
“This is an exciting opportunity for those in our re-entry population to start a career with the State of California with permanent jobs that offer great benefits and even a retirement plan,” says Sindy Pardo, transitional coordinator for the Five Keys, who pioneered the partnership with the California Prison Industry Authority’s Custodian Certificate Training Program (CCTP) for Five Keys. The goal is to keep rolling out the program to Five Keys re-entry members in the months and years ahead.
The Five Keys training is being held at Los Angeles Mission and the Asian-American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP, Inc. - Youth & Family Programs) in Los Angeles is contributing the supplies and janitor car with brooms and mops. The hotel jobs are in partnership with 70 Million Jobs program, a database of jobs for people with criminal records.
Students in the five-week training will be trained in all the necessary job skills they need as housekeepers and building custodians including safety about cleaning chemicals, floors, and floor care equipment, maintaining floors and other surfaces, restroom care and carpeting and upholstery care. At the completion of the courses, they will be tested for their certifications.
About Five Keys Schools and Programs
Dedicated to getting people’s lives back on track, Five Keys Schools and Programs currently serves 24 million people or 60% of the California population of 40 million in The San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today its efforts have grown exponentially. The organization interrupts the cycles of homelessness, substance abuse, violence, literacy and incarceration through our 80 community learning centers, transitional housing shelters, career centers, and community-based workforce networks by investing in their humanity so that they can be self-determined to change their lives. Five Keys also hires people directly into our transitional employment positions for formerly incarcerated individuals and people currently or formerly experiencing homelessness, while also employing over 300 formerly incarcerated individuals in full-time, benefited positions. www.fivekeys.org.
About The California Prison Industry (CALPIA)
The California Prison Industry (CALPIA) is a self-supporting, customer-focused business that provides productive work assignments for approximately 7,000 incarcerated individuals within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) institutions. CALPIA manages over 100 manufacturing, service, and consumable operations in all 35 CDCR institutions throughout California. The goods and services produced by CALPIA are sold predominately to departments of the State of California, as well as other government entities. CALPIA’s goal is to train incarcerated individuals with job skills, good work habits, and basic education and job support in the community, so when they parole, they never return to prison.www.calpia.ca.gov.